[HN Gopher] Eerie emptiness of ERs worries doctors: where are th... ___________________________________________________________________ Eerie emptiness of ERs worries doctors: where are the heart attacks and strokes? Author : harambaebae69 Score : 24 points Date : 2020-05-06 22:10 UTC (49 minutes ago) (HTM) web link (www.npr.org) (TXT) w3m dump (www.npr.org) | aluminussoma wrote: | There is also another opinion: that many people go to the ER who | don't really need to go there. | | I had to visit the ER recently. I did not want to go but my | doctor insisted. A family member who is also a doctor also | insisted I go. | | The ER was eerily empty. The ER doctor saw me immediately. There | were only a couple of other patients that I could see. This | contrasts to prior experiences in the ER where there is a long | wait as I get triaged, with lots of people waiting to be seen. | | Fortunately my situation was nothing serious. When I returned | home and told my relative, he said his hospital's emergency | department was also very light. In his opinion, there were a lot | of people going to the ER who didn't need to go in the first | place. | sushid wrote: | The article addresses this. They expect fewer trauma patients | as there are fewer people on the road, etc. but they expect the | number of stroke, heart attack, etc. patients to remain | constant, which hasn't been the case. | xenonite wrote: | Of course, people hesitate to go to the doctor. But I see a | second factor: Maybe it's because of a slowing down in many | regards. Hence, less stress, and less heart attacks? | guscost wrote: | Dying at home, many of them. Excess mortality is way up, and it's | not all COVID-19. | [deleted] ___________________________________________________________________ (page generated 2020-05-06 23:00 UTC)