part 1
Now I'm not saying that we should run out and immediately open up our State! I believe there's a lot of validity and truth to this persons words. How long is too long? I don't know? Unfortunately, the longer we wait, the consequences and devastation may be much higher than this pandemic!
READ ON- Stiles is an MD. He sent this to Governor Kate of Oregon.
Dear Governor Brown:
I will be 76 years old next month. I take medication for high blood pressure and a heart condition. I therefore fall into the “high risk” category as far as the Covid-19 virus is concerned. I also am a retired plastic and reconstructive surgeon as well as a retired US Army officer. I am a veteran of both the Vietnam and Iraq wars. In my career as a surgeon and in the army, I’ve seen death up close many, many times.
I have followed the Covid-19 situation closely through the Oregon Health Authorities’ daily updates. It is obvious that the victims of Covid-19 in Oregon have almost universally been elderly and with “underlying medical conditions”. As of April 17 the death toll stands at 70 in a state with a population of 4.2 million people. The ages of the fatalities listed for April 17 are 88, 95, 86, 65, 91 and 76. The youngest fatality in Oregon was 41 years old with the next youngest being 59. Most of the additional fatalities have been over 70 with many in their 80s and 90s. Of those, a significant percentage have been clustered in nursing homes where one presumes that they were either in assisted living or being treated for such conditions as dementia. Many of the extreme elderly are listed as dying “at home”. Not in a hospital and, one presumes, not on a ventilator and, hopefully, surrounded by loving family.
As sad as this pandemic has been world and nationwide, Oregon certainly seems to have been spared the worst of it. We must view situations like New York City, Detroit and New Orleans as being much different from our state. In NYC the population density is 28,000 people per square mile. There are 2.2 million subway riders daily. Obviously this is the perfect incubation setting for a massive outbreak.
