What We’re Reading

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Limits:

Some health-care workers told me that COVID-19 patients are the sickest people they’ve ever cared for: They require twice as much attention as a typical intensive-care-unit patient, for three times the normal length of stay. “It was doable over the summer, but now it’s just too much,” says Whitney Neville, a nurse based in Iowa. “Last Monday we had 25 patients waiting in the emergency department. They had been admitted but there was no one to take care of them.” I asked her how much slack the system has left. “There is none,” she said.

Growth:

College:

The number of new international students at U.S. campuses plummeted by 43% this fall, according to an early snapshot that illustrates just how hard colleges and universities were hit by the pandemic and a flurry of shifting directives from the Trump administration.

Overall, enrollment of foreign students fell by 16%, according to a survey of more than 700 schools conducted this fall by 10 higher education associations.

Effects:

Mich. hospital data: Of people admitted with COVID, 70% were alive and home 60 days later.

Of those who’d been working, 40% either lost their job or were still too sick to work.

It’s not just the deaths; it’s the health and economic damage.

Opportunities:

Ending the pandemic is reason enough for celebration when it gets here but you have to imagine there will be even more breakthroughs based on what’s been learned through this experience.

Will it be easier to fight potential pandemics in the future?

How many new and effective treatments will be spawned?

What have scientists around the globe learned from their hyper-speed collaboration?

Will we discover new ways of fighting diseases in the future?

Have a good weekend, stay safe.

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