Jose Pascual, a critical care doctor at the University of Pennsylvania Health System, recalled those first, mad days treating the sick when he had little to offer beyond hunches and Hail Marys. Each new day brought bizarre new complications of the coronavirus that defied textbook treatments.
“We were flying blind,” he said. “There is nothing more disturbing for me as a doctor.”
Now, for the first time since a wave of patients flooded their emergency rooms in March, Pascual and others on the front lines are expressing a feeling they say they haven’t felt in a long time – glimmers of hope. They say they have devised a toolbox, albeit a limited and imperfect one, of drugs and therapies many believe give today’s patients a better shot at survival than those who came only a few weeks before.
“The knowledge accumulated during the past couple of months was due not to a single eureka moment but rather a steady stream of small discoveries.”
Nice piece in the @washingtonpost on the accumulation of clinical insights on COVID-19 treatment. https://t.co/7SQehKGWwZ
— Purnima Menon (@PMenonIFPRI) May 15, 2020