Reading Response 3 – Barclay

This article focuses on and details some important information regarding the coronavirus/COVID-19 pandemic. It contains much vital information on important topics and questions people may have about the pandemic, specifically of the notion of “flattening the curveā€. This notion outlines the attempt to slow down the spread of the virus in order to try and prevent our health care system from being overwhelmed with cases. Since this is a vital concept for people to understand, it is good that the article put it in such a clear and concise way.

The article also focuses on the number of ventilators available in the United States. If the COVID-19 pandemic is similar in severity to that of the flu pandemic of 1957 and 1958 , the U.S. would have enough ventilators to support everyone who would need one, as the total capacity of ventilators in the U.S. is 160,000. However, if this pandemic escalates to a situation similar to that of the Spanish flu pandemic, we are short of ventilators by a long shot. This would put medical professionals in an extremely difficult situation, where they would have to pick and choose which patients were put on ventilators, and have to find new, creative ways of care in order to attempt to save the rest. Through outlining this, the article does a good job in driving home the recommendation to cancel events and self-isolate, so we can try to avoid such a terrible scenario.