Apologies everyone! The video /was/ available when I published this post but apparently it is now ‘private’. I’ve just tried a number of channels on Youtube and they’re all blocked. I have no idea what happened. Maybe Sky News waved the big copyright stick? 😦
This is the only still image I have:
I was trying to get a pic of the padded restraint.
Updated April 23, 2020, Australia
One image that will stay with me forever is that of a patient, a large man in his fifties perhaps, trying to take the plastic hood thing off his head. The staff had to tie down his hands. They did it to try and save his life, but I know what he was doing. The hood thing wasn’t enough. He felt like he was suffocating, and in his desperation he thought that he would breathe better if it came off…
I almost drowned when I was 21. How and why doesn’t matter. What matters is that I still remember what it felt like not to be able to breathe out. I remember the desperation. There is no logic at that point. It’s all animal instinct.
I hope that man survived, but I fear he didn’t. One of the scary statistics I’ve read since this pandemic began was that of all the people sick enough to be intubated [put on a ventilator], only about 50% survive.
50% – toss a coin. Heads or tails. Life or death.
Financial interests in Australia, the UK and the US are calling for the lockdowns to be eased. They think the danger is over because the curve is starting to flatten. But the people pushing for a return to ‘normal’ see human lives only as a statistic. I hope that at least some of them watch this video and realise that this thing can still get away from us. And if it does, we could all end up like Bergamo in Lombardy.
Meeks
Meeka's Mind 
April 24th, 2020 at 3:44 pm
I didn’t watch the video but I have seen our daughter struggle to breathe she is a chronic asthmatic and it is not pleasant…Like you, Meeka I also nearly drowned as a child which was why I learnt to swim but that fear of that feeling becoming a reality again has stayed with me…Be safe x
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April 24th, 2020 at 8:28 pm
You know. -nods- Many of my nephews & nieces are asthmatics too. Not being able to breathe is scary, very scary. -hugs-
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April 24th, 2020 at 8:39 pm
I know.. I was also reading about oxygen saturation levels earlier which made some sense in all of this.. Hugs x
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April 25th, 2020 at 12:23 am
Yeah. When this virus gets nasty, it gets very nasty.
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April 25th, 2020 at 12:33 am
So it seems… X
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April 23rd, 2020 at 8:25 pm
I found Coronavirus, A Hospital’s story. A Sky News special about an Italian hospital.
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April 23rd, 2020 at 7:29 pm
The numbers are terrible in the UK. I was shocked two nurses from the hospital local to where I last lived in the UK had died. Nonetheless most people seem to be managing to stay positive. My mother says she has not been looking at the figures. I believe UK figures are now worse than Italy. Australia has been pretty sensible up till now. Morale is everything. I have always believed in the power of laughter to get us through most things.
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April 23rd, 2020 at 5:41 am
Hey Meeks, video won’t work … can you post the URL?
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April 23rd, 2020 at 11:13 am
Sorry, Widds. Just updated the post. Apparently that video has been blocked on all Youtube channels. I guess Sky News wants its $$.
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April 23rd, 2020 at 2:01 am
I was unable to open the YouTube video. The message says that it is private. Perhaps just as well. Originally I wasn’t going to watch it as I had a light to medium case of Covid-19 (need the antibody test to be confirm) and my three weeks of yuck is nothing compared to what others have had.
This happened in January. We are from the US but are living in Mazatlan which is a port city in Mexico with tourists from all over. I have a healthy lifestyle and a good immune system after teaching young children for many years. I think taking ibuprofen (didn’t know any better at the time) made it worse. I am also blood type A which may also make it a bit worse.
I think Austria is using a titration system of sorts. That may work. I worry so much about opening things up too soon!
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April 23rd, 2020 at 11:22 am
Sorry Ellen! I only just realised that the video has been pulled. Not available anywhere on Youtube.
I had no idea you’d already had the virus, and so early! Just goes to show how much undetected spread there has been. 😦
I’m so glad you came through it okay, although I imagine it must have felt pretty awful. I’ve read/watched some first hand accounts of people who had a ‘mild’ dose and even that sounds horrible.
I worry too. The Offspring is in a high risk category so I’m not going to feel safe until the whole world has been vaccinated, from the richest countries to the poorest.
Are you fully recovered now?
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April 24th, 2020 at 3:15 am
Yes! I am fully recovered and healthy. The scariest parts for me were the time length (I’m rarely ill for longer than a week – lucky me), and the trouble getting enough air. I forced myself to breathe as deeply as possible.
This morning I heard from a friend in Mazatlan who had many the of the symptoms earlier than me. This was early January for her. I suspect the virus has been lurking about since October. Just a guess.
Stay safe!
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April 24th, 2020 at 12:13 pm
Yes! New info is suggesting that the virus has been around for much longer than the official dates. Probably explains the massive spread as well.
Glad to hear that the breathing helped. Been getting some interesting info. re that as well. Thanks for confirming it. -hugs-
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April 23rd, 2020 at 12:34 am
Just fyi… I was unable to view the video. Living in the U.S. epicenter, so… not sure I need to see more than I’m seeing every day. This is REAL. Yesterday the Governor of New York State (a large state including very dense New York City and areas that are rural and everything in-between) said that the good news was that things are not as terrible as they have been. Only 471 covid19 deaths in the previous day. (It has been over 800 a day not long ago.) This is scary and I’m in the middle of it. Haven’t been blogging for a couple of weeks. Will try to start again. Don’t want Candy’s Monsters to be a rant about being lonely and scared, but there you have it. I am both lonely and scared. I’d love to be out and about at Tango dances, the pottery studio, theaters museums and dining out with friends, but NONE of those things are coming back for a good long while. First step—get the virus’ spread under control. Then, and only then, do we go back to anything resembling normal.
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April 23rd, 2020 at 11:34 am
Sorry, Candy. I suspect Sky News forced Youtube to pull the video because it has completely disappeared.
And you’re right, only when the spread of the virus is completely under control should we think about going back to normal. That said, I don’t know that we’ll recognize normal when we finally see it again.
As for not ranting? Oh Candy. You do NOT have to go through this alone. Physically yes, but emotionally? No! We are all friends here, and we’re all afraid. Sharing that fear, and the loneliness, lets us take strength from each other.
All my posts on Covid-19 are really about fear, my fear. The only way I know how to cope with fear is to learn everything about it, to do everything in my power to prevent it. Once there is nothing more I can do, the fear becomes…manageable.
Please blog. You’re allowed to be scared and lonely. And think – silver lining- those posts will also be a record of what such a disaster /feels/ like. For when it’s over and we all forget.
-massive hugs-
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April 22nd, 2020 at 5:27 pm
Scary is the fact that at the moments scientists have no clue about this virus. There is no therapy, no vaccine, nothing. That is why we have to stay at home. I live in Rome and this is my seventh week on a very strict lockdown even if figures here are much more, let’s say, optimistic than in the North of Italy. Its spread seems extremely slow. Why? We just don’t know.
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April 22nd, 2020 at 4:00 pm
I csn’t watch it but I read a very good medical article about the detailed and extensive effects of coronavirus on the body if one has the misfortune to be a human it colonizes to full effect… not something the taken lightly. Regardless of economic and covidiot pressures towards bureaucratic lifting of restrictions, we’ll be running to our own timetable.
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April 22nd, 2020 at 2:46 pm
The thought of this reality we’re facing now scares me a lot
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April 22nd, 2020 at 2:37 pm
Sad and scary… I wish people and politicians would wake up.
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April 22nd, 2020 at 10:19 pm
Me too, Bette, me too. 😦
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April 22nd, 2020 at 2:33 pm
Its horrifying to think that anyone would consider ending lockdown as long as there are still patients like these happening.everywhere and with the thought that maybe the thing is mutating already Keep the lockdown until there are no more new patients.We can kickstart the economy when there’s no danger.
Hugs
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April 22nd, 2020 at 10:19 pm
I agree complete, David. Stay well. -hugs-
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April 22nd, 2020 at 2:07 pm
Won’t be watching; it’s terrifying enough without these details, and I have no problem believing scientists. If you have pictures of people, I hope they’ve given their consent; they’re probably not at their best.
I know I don’t stand much of a chance if I get the virus; but it’s going to be a long isolation.
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April 22nd, 2020 at 2:15 pm
yeah, it was pretty gruelling. 😦 I just hope that some of those who don’t consider themselves to be at risk watch it, and have a change of heart.
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April 22nd, 2020 at 1:59 pm
I didn’t watch the video, Meeks, to disturbing and I have seem some others like this from Italy. Thanks for keeping us updated, it is helpful.
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April 22nd, 2020 at 2:17 pm
That’s okay, Robbie. I had trouble watching it myself. To be honest, I fear coming out of the lockdown far more than what we’ve experienced so far. My faith in human nature swings from high to low multiple times a day.
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April 22nd, 2020 at 1:34 pm
The more that seems to be discovered about this virus, the scarier it becomes: people appear not to develop lasting immunity to it; cured patients have relapses back into it; and preliminary research suggests it can remain viable in an aerosol for up to 12 hours. I am sure there will be more. And I’m sure answers will be found in the longer term – the problem being ‘longer term’…
That push for ‘return to normal’ puzzles me. It’s been framed as a choice between ‘accepting some casualties but avoiding a crash’ or ‘locking everybody down and crashing the economy’. But the world has been ready for such a crash for a while. Even last year, economists I know were remarking that it was due, the only missing bit was the trigger. So the real calculation – pointed out by a brilliant commentator here in NZ – is the choice between (a) an economic crash with a pile of dead bodies; and (b) an economic crash without such a pile. And, really, that means there’s no actual choice.
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April 22nd, 2020 at 2:21 pm
God yes. That’s one reason I cannot understand the Swedish policy, if it can be called one. I’ve always thought of Sweden as being one of /the/ most socially progressive countries in the world. Yet it seems hell bent on going for so called herd immunity, bugger the size of pile.
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