Dear friends,
I just wanted to tell you just how happy I am that I am able to contribute to your lives with the information on my blog and this website. Every day I review scientific literature and communicate with doctors who are treating the disease and try to piece it all together for you. I hope that it helps you make sense of this confusing virus and the disarray that it has created in our lives. What started out as one simple blog post about this pandemic, has now taken over my whole website :) It's amazing that I've been able to gather so much information - I never expected for it to happen! Since my site grew so rapidly, I am reorganizing it a little bit - to make it easier to find information. So if you notice that some of the pages look a little different or being moved around, that's why it is happening. I am sure you've come across a lot of conflicting information in the media. It's not surprising - this particular Coronavirus in only a few months old, and we know very little about it. Most doctors who are on the front lines dealing with the disease are working day and night and don't really have much time to publish their results. In fact, it's a miracle that this much data is becoming available. I am going through hundreds of pages of information every day and try to find the most accurate details for you. These are confusing times, and we are all learning how to deal with this virus as we go along. Epidemiologists are trying to help us contain it. Governments are trying to balance scientific advice with somehow salvaging collapsing economy as well as preventing chaos without infringing on people's essential freedoms. Doctors are trying to figure out how to treat it. Healthcare organizations are trying to deal with the rush of new patients while protecting healthcare workers from getting sick, and managing limited supplies of testing kits and equipment. All of us, humans, are trying to figure out how to live in the new crazy world! The world, in which everything became so different practically overnight! It's trial and error time! This pandemic is quite overwhelming for most people. In spite of that, there is a certain lightness in the air. Talented people who used to be in the shadows are stepping up, shy folks who went along with what they didn't agree with are speaking up, people are helping each other, making each other laugh, many people are feeling more connected regardless of being more isolated - a spiritual transformation is happening in the world! I believe that something magical will come out of it all. After the pandemic is behind us, from all the chaos we will re-emerge as more thoughtful, kind, and caring human beings, and our beautiful Earth will feel healed. So I just want to send you some encouragement. We are going through tough times, but we are doing it together. You are not alone. You are loved. Stay informed. Stay safe. Follow all the social distancing and hygiene rules, and simply take it day by day. This is our time to pause, to reassess, to find inner calm, to see the beauty in ordinary things. With compassion and love, - Dr. Maria Danilychev, MD
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This is a quote from a doctor from Rockport, Maine. This physician's viral post in a Facebook Group for medical professionals fighting COVID-19 has received hundreds of "ME TOO!" replies from around the country within hours. The doctor has agreed for me to share her outcry with you, requesting to be anonymous to avoid potential retaliation from her hospital administration. It may be one person's voice but it saying what's on the minds of so many! This is real. Please read. "Warning. Vent: I am starting to feel so confused. Too many questions, too little evidence based data, too many rapidly changing “guidance”, too many hypothetical answers. No PPE*, horrid non existent access to testing. We give and sacrifice so much for this job, this calling, this privilege of being a doctor, a job we love and now.... we are left out here vulnerable and abandoned. I just can’t wrap my head around it. So many of us exposed, maybe exposed, likely exposed. Our kids sick, family members sick, our patients sick and we have NO GD ANSWERS. So if my kid has a 104 fever what do I do? Go to the hospital, don’t go to the hospital? Ask for a test? Get a flu test? Yes you can be coinfected, but maybe not. Only this age or that age. No freakin actual facts. Good luck, sorry doc. You don’t meet the “criteria”. Your kid doesn’t meet “criteria” your patient doesn’t meet “criteria”. The magic fvcking criteria made up by people NOT on the front lines. So what do you do? Stay home, go in, possibly expose more people? Stay home for 3 days, 10 days, 14 days? Repeat test, oh wait no test done. So don’t repeat test. Wear a respirator, wait no surgical mask ok. It’s probably airborne and probably droplet. Use an N95 until you have the results of the test you can’t order. Really?!?!WTGDF !? It’s like a bad Vietnam War movie. The guy 1000 miles away from the gunshots is making all the decisions and he doesn’t really care if you live or die. This can’t be the reality. I feel like I’m losing my mind. For $10 I’d put my family in the car, drive off into the woods and camp for the next 6 months. It’s all too much. Someone has to do something! Meanwhile people across the country- some my family and friends! Out in bars, out having fun without a care in the world. Not a shred of reality. And we will be resuscitating them and passing it- this amorphous unknown unpredictable motherfvcker of a virus to ourselves and our families. Why?!! I’m just totally lost." * PPE - Personal Protective Equipment (like facemasks, etc.) DOCTORS' HANDS ARE TIEDAlthough some hospitals are doing an excellent job with COVID-19 reponse, it appears that many doctors are forced to work without proper protective equipment. Many doctors feel that their hands are tied by hospital administrators. Here is what this doctor had to say about the situation many physicians are facing. (Reposting with the doctor's permission): "When exactly did physicians lose control of our profession?😢 I’ve read all the posts in this group, and am sensing such powerlessness and despair: story after story by my physician colleagues all across the country, of “ADMIN” * mandating things during this COVID19 crisis that we as physicians know are unethical and unsafe. They sit in their safe offices telling us that even though we have inadequate PPE** , we must make do and continue to work, reuse PPE and ask permission to access N95 masks*** that they’ve locked away. They’re refusing to “allow” us to cancel non-urgent routine appointments and surgeries -we have to wait for admin to decide. They’re refusing to “allow us” to test patients we know should be tested. They’re forbidding us from publicly posting about the crisis because we are “inciting panic.” They’re threatening our jobs if we don’t comply. We are afraid to speak out because we don’t want to lose our jobs. We’re afraid to refuse to see patients without adequate PPE, both because of “admin” and a misguided sense of duty. Every one of us that are working without PPE are at high risk of infection, and will become super-spreaders. We’ll be passing it along to subsequent patients during our asymptomatic period, and bringing it home to our families, before we then become infected patients ourselves. Won’t we end up infecting more people overall than if we refused upfront to see pts without adequate PPE? We have no union, most of us are employees following the direction of people with half the education and intelligence than us. They’re the kings sitting on horses directing us lowly soldiers at the front line to charge, without swords and shields. When did we become so powerless? And when this crisis is over, is anything going to change? Sorry for the rant and I actually don’t have the answers, just felt the need to vocalize what so many are feeling. God protect us all 🙏🏽 (ETA to be fair: I must say on a personal note that my organization has been overall very responsive to the concerns of its PCPs****, received our constructive feedback/suggestions and started instituting changes within the last week like 90% telemedicine, remote work for high risk PCPS...mainly because it is PHYSICIAN led. This is also why we need to #takebackmedicine.)" * "ADMIN" - referring to hospital administration in this case
** PPE - personal protective equipment, such as face masks *** N95 masks - the masks healthcare workers should be using to be protected from Coronavirus **** PCP - primary care physician/provider "Dear friends. My fellow humans. Please share.
I don’t know what to do. I literally want to cry right now because so many people I know are taking what’s happening with coronavirus too lightly. We are on the brink of a preventable global catastrophe due to this pandemic. We only have a few days left to help the situation and in one very simple way. PLEASE STAY HOME! Yes, it’s that simple. Don’t go anywhere for a few weeks unless it is necessary for your survival. I know it sounds extreme, but there are lots of asymptomatic carriers in the community who haven’t been diagnosed with COVID-19 yet and who are unknowingly spreading the disease. Every time you leave your home, not only you are exposing yourself, you are potentially exposing EVERYONE you come in contact with for up to 4 weeks of getting the virus! (It’s less than 2 weeks in 99% of cases, but there is that 1% that’s also very real.) Even if your own symptoms are mild to none, you can infect others! By leaving your home you could unwillingly contribute to someone’s demise. I know you don’t want that. It doesn’t matter if you are young and healthy. If you are around other people, you may still get the virus which could be deadly to you or to someone you care about. I’d like to make a parallel. It might sound shocking perhaps. I want to compare us leaving our homes right now to drunk driving. We can all agree that drunk driving puts people’s lives in danger. Imagine if every time you left your home you were at risk of returning completely intoxicated and accidentally hurting someone close to you. And that each time you left home, it could lead to several new drunk drivers who could kill someone? And that each of those people would create their own “set” of deadly drunk drivers and so on, like a domino effect? Can you imagine? This is exactly what this is like, but worse! Experts in pandemics have extremely grim predictions of what will happen with COVID-19 and with the devastation that it will bring to the world. Millions will die, and it’s not science fiction. It’s reality. Please. I am begging you. Try to hear what I am trying to say. Let’s make those predictions wrong by doing what no scientist could predict! By being kind, thoughtful, and responsible human beings - by staying home. Every single one of us! In a few weeks, when we start seeing the aftermath of our careless decisions, it will be too late! Don’t wait until a mandatory quarantine is instituted. Stay home now! By doing this you will be preventing the virus from spreading, and will help save hundreds of thousands of lives! I don’t know how to help people understand just how critical this is, and how important it is for it to happen TODAY, NOW! I don’t know if you can hear me, but I hope you do. Please share. If it saves even just one life, it’s worth it. Writing to humanity in desperation on March 15th, 2020 from San Diego, California. With love and gratitude, Dr. Maria Danilychev, MD" |
AuthorDr. Maria Danilychev, M.D., is a San Diego based medical doctor with 20 years of experience and board-certified in Internal Medicine, Geriatrics, Hospice/Palliative Medicine, and as a Hospice Medical Director. Dr. Danilychev also conducts clinical trials and was one of the first responders during 9/11. ArchivesCategories
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