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“......check all staff daily in and out...do the testing of staff as well.........”

First one of the things that the Kirkland Life Center nursing home said was that they typically have 7 or so deaths a month. It took a while for them and others to figure out that “these” deaths all fit the same pattern and not the random deaths they were use to seeing. By then things were too well distributed among the fragile patients.

I have a dear friend (former coworker of my wife at a retirement facility) She is in lock down as three people there have tested positive for Covid-19. One was a staff person who worked in the skilled care wing among the most fragile. Another was a staff member who worked with more mobile and healthier residents. The third was a very fragile patient in the skilled care center.

Now as to testing everyone. That is the current priority, but up until very recently they haven't had the test kits to do the testing.

It will get worse in terms of many more deaths before it gets better, but I am still not seeing exponential growth in the number of deaths. In fact all the charts I have seen world wide show pretty linear death rates, not exponentially growing deaths. Cases are growing exponentially, or at least with more testing the number of known cases is rising rapidly. But there seems to be a disconnect between “cases” and deaths.

Again, the disease is very hard on the very fragile. In Italy an analysis of the deaths indicates that the vast majority seem to have two and more likely three serious underlying medical condition. Some of them include: high blood pressure, heart disease, diabetes, obesity, breathing disorders.

A few years ago, I attended a seminar on “how to prepare for retirement and how to get your life in order.” Besides the wills, trusts, powers of attorney, etc, I was told to find a geriatric doctor so that they could do a baseline on me. I tried to get an appointment with about ten geriatric doctors. At the time I was recovering from a horrible accident that required 3 surgeries on my leg. I was using a walker, then crutches, then cane. None of the geriatric doctors would see me. In frustration I had a long discussion with one of the schedulers. She told me that I wasn't fragile enough to be seen by the doctors. I got it and said to be seen you then need to be really fragile like on death's doorstep. Yes.

When some, not all, of the people dying of Covid-19 die, except for the symptoms, it is not too much of a surprise to their relatives or staff who thought that most didn't have that much longer to live. Others, just quickly get very very sick and die.