Emergency Intervention Order: Fill & Download for Free

Here is what I think would be the likeliest scenario:All western media in HK are told that they must leave HK in the next 24 hours;Party central would announced that in order to restore order, the Hong Kong government had requested a military intervention, and after considering the issue from all sides, President Xi Jinping had given orders through the Central Military Commission, to make an emergency intervention in Hong Kong;A curfew will be announced, and violators will be arrested and imprisoned.All Hong Kong citizens are ordered to stay at home for one week, and emergency services will be provided by the PLA;The PLA will bring food and essentials to HK, and they will be photographed and videotaped doing this by the Propaganda Department of the Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party. This will be widely shown on television and media in China.Just as the pro-democracy activists think that they are safe, the security services of the PRC, working together with the HK police, will start arresting troublemakers at their homes in the middle of the night. Since there is no western media in HK, there will be no reporting about this.The troublemakers will be sent to separate re-education camps in Xinjiang, where they will learn songs praising the party, and watch videos about China has prospered under the leadership of the party. Their Mandarin will improve really fast.If they show good behavior, they will return sooner to HK. If not, they can learn more songs and watch more videos, and get better at Mandarin.

Guess what? Epidemiologists aren’t dumb.Mortality rate never includes undiagnosed cases—of any disease, at least not in the way you mean.Mortality rate is a way of comparing the severity of known diseases. Roughly speaking, it measures the percentage of known or presumed cases that lead to death. Known or presumed cases is a number based on the consensus judgment of trained epidemiologists. There is no other way to get it, because we do not have any way to routinely test even a random sampling of the population at large for any disease.The Spanish Flu of 1918 is estimated to have had a mortality rate of 2.5%, but not one single diagnosis was made on the basis of a lab test looking for viral DNA or circulating antigens—those technologies did not exist.Today, they do, but they are still only one tool in the epidemiological toolkit—for the simple reason that such tests are necessarily virus-specific, and can never be made ready fast enough or in large enough numbers to test an entire population during an emerging outbreak.Instead, known or presumed cases are identified first by looking at clinical presentation—symptoms, then by performing tests. When available, the two are combined to sample parts of the population and so estimate disease burden throughout the population as a whole.But the numbers are always estimates, and can never be anything else, and the methods used by epidemiologists are often confounded by local conditions, or even by happenstance.As I write this, numbers released by the Iranian government imply a terrifyingly large 11% mortality rate for SARS-CoV-2. However, we have good reason to believe the Iranian government initially attempted to hide the extent of the outbreak there, and deaths are harder to hide than infections. We also know they lack the ability to perform the fieldwork needed to estimate the number of less severe infections. Thus, their total infection count includes only the most severe cases, and this explains the anomalously high mortality rate as reported.On the other hand, data from China tell an interesting story. As of February 20th, China is reporting mortality rates of 5.8% in Wuhan and only 0.7% other areas.Does that imply the COVID-19 is not big deal? No. Definitely not.First, 0.7% mortality is seven times worse than the average for seasonal flu, and the novel coronavirus is about twice as contagious. So going from that number alone, you can expect an uncontrolled COVID-19 outbreak in the US to kill three quarters of a million people—except contagion doesn’t scale linearly, so the number would actually be higher than that.Second, that low rate outside Hubei province is in a population already on high alert, taking draconian measures to contain the outbreak, and in which cases can be quickly identified and effectively treated, including with anti-viral medications an ventilators. The initial fatality rate in Wuhan was a whopping 17.3%! The kind of intensive treatment needed to keep mortality rates low just cannot be maintained if the virus is allowed to sicken millions all at the same time.Third, the underappreciated danger of COVID-19 is not the ray infection or mortality rate, but the fact that its victims appear about 20 times more likely to require hospitalization, as opposed to seasonal flu. Western medical infrastructure cannot cope with such a deluge without emergency intervention—if at all. As I write this, the estimated mortality rate in Italy is 5%. Partly that’s due to the age of its population, but in the last two weeks, the nation has seen confirmed infections grow from under 250 to over 10,000, and this is all mostly confined to the northern third of the territory. There are no longer enough hospital beds—or ventilators—to go around.“Coronavirus probably isn't very serious” is exactly the WRONG conclusion to draw from this data. The correct conclusion is, “Coronavirus is very, very serious, but if we can slow it down enough, we can prevent it becoming a catastrophe.”How do we do that?Wash hands correctly. Learn how to wear a mask properly. Comply with control orders from health officials. And just in case, designate a room in your home as an isolated sick ward, and give some thought to how to provide care while minimizing the spread of virus particles through physical contact and exhaled droplets.It’s looking increasingly unlikely that this virus can be contained, but the more we can slow it down, the better the care we can provide to those who catch it. That’s as true in our individual homes as it is in nations.And if we slow it down enough, we can stop it with a vaccine.

Yes. Doctors know how to diagnose, prescribe medications and order treatments. Nurses know how to administer medications and provide treatments. They set up all specialty equipment, monitor patients and report their observations. They provide emergency interventions.In my career, I have taught physicians how to administer 5FU and Factor 8 IV. (It was a long time ago).Please keep in mind that physicians rely on nurses to perform their duties and administer patient care.