Ventilators

Tale of Two Pandemics: Beware of Slackers

Some slackers faced death sentences during the 1918 pandemic. I guess we are all familiar with the idea that history repeats itself, and, accordingly, if we don’t learn from the mistakes of the past, we’ll keep on making the same blunders. The Philosopher George Santayana gets the credit for best expressing this theorem with this assessment: "Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it." He was looking at this from a historical perspective, a world view, [...]

By Wes Skillings|2022-01-24T09:09:58+00:00July 22, 2020|1918, American History, Coronavirus, Coughing, COVID-19, death, History, Mortality, Pandemics, Public Health, Spanish Influenza, Ventilators|

Who Gets the Ventilator? Not the Old Guy

It could come to this. "No ventilator for you! —There is nothing exempt from humor— even death— so forgive some self-deprecating humor in these troubled times.— Old guys used to have it made. We ruled the world. Sure we started some wars along the way and were responsible for the demise of a slew of young men who never got a chance to become old guys like us. Yes, we made our mistakes, but did it really [...]

By Wes Skillings|2022-01-24T09:10:01+00:00March 25, 2020|Aging, Coronavirus, COVID-19, death, Extremes, Medicine, Mortality, Triage, Ventilators|