What doctors and nurses are sharing online about COVID-19: April 17–23

Reporting on treatment and testing best practices, clinical outcomes and dissemination; PPE and staff shortages, censorship for HCPs

Qntfy is using our Cohort Analytics Platform to analyze and report on the conversations, health, and wellbeing of health care professionals (HCPs) during the COVID-19 pandemic. This is the fifth blog post in our series on HCPs. Learn more about the background and methods in our introductory post. This post was primarily authored by Product Lead Joshua Carroll.

We developed the insights in this report by first identifying a cohort of english speaking health care professionals (HCPs) on social media with high precision. We then use natural language processing techniques on the content that they produce to provide novel insight into their concerns, needs, and mental health. Each week we’ll report on highlights and trends from our analysis of this discourse.

Highlights

• Extensive discussion and reporting from a variety of sources about treatment best practices, clinical outcomes, pathology of COVID-19, and what is happening on the ground in hospitals.
• More discussion about testing results, best practices, and dissemination
• Equipment and staff shortages for HCPs, censorship for workers and government officials

Treatment, Pathology and Clinical Outcomes

• The NIH released new treatment and prevention guidelines from an expert panel
• Clinical characteristics and outcomes in New York City from JAMA and NEJM, and a broader overview of the disease behavior in Science
• Discussion of particular treatment methods, need for kidney dialysis, impacts on patients with obesity and hypertension, and a surprising finding about blood clots
• Results for patients taking hydroxychloroquine
• How COVID-19 treatment is impacting care for other, non-COVID patients in the current medical system

Testing Results, Practices and Looking at Spread

• Surprisingly high rate of infection found by large-scale testing in Los Angeles and Boston
• A heavily cited study about contact tracing of spread via air-conditioning at in an indoor restaurant in China
• A video of best practices for obtaining a swab for COVID-19 diagnosis from NEJM
• A need to ramp up testing and scenarios for universal screening, as well as concerns about the antibody tests and testing guidelines from the CDC
• Increased spread after protests in Kentucky and encouragement to social distance from the CDC

Equipment and staff shortages, censorship

• Discussion about the difficulty of (and federal interference in) obtaining PPE for hospitals in NEJM with additional coverage in New York Intelligencer
• Nurse shortages and patients turned away at a hospital in London
• Former director of BARDA speaks out about his sudden dismissal as politically motivated, and discussion of general censorship of hospital staff in NYTimes
• Amplifying more successful government leadership styles in Germany and New Zealand

Most popular messages

To get a more direct sense of how HCPs are feeling we also took a look at some of the messages that were most frequently shared and amplified among healthcare professionals.

My brother died this morning. 51 years old. Alone. In hospital. To those who think Covid 19 won’t affect them, go and see my mother, my sister in law and their kids, my brother and sisters and me. Look at us and see we are broken. Then take a fucking good look at yourself.

We are committing national suicide. It’s incredibly painful to watch.

Posts that are against vaccines could soon be banned from Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram under new laws in UK. This sort of censorship should alarm everyone. “If fascism ever comes to the America, it will come in the name of liberalism” -Ronald Reagan

Trump tweeted twelve times today but not once — not a word of sympathy or remembrance — for the 4,591 Americans who died yesterday alone.

Average deaths per year from the flu (past 9 years) in the US: 37,461 Deaths from coronavirus in just the last ~6 weeks after incredible lockdowns/isolation across the country: 40,000+ There are not strong enough words for the idiots who keep screaming this is “just the flu.”

Dr. Birx is an Army Colonel and a subject matter expert who has dedicated her life to fighting infectious diseases. Why shouldn’t she also be able to speak? “Joe Biden: Dr. Anthony Fauci should be ‘only person’ public hears from during COVID-19 crisis”

Dear CDC Director: Stop lying. Your initial tests failed. And you had ridiculously restrictive testing criteria focused on people from Wuhan. You missed everyone who brought in the virus from Italy, S Korea, Spain etc. And you missed community spread. That’s why virus exploded.

When the State prevents you from buying cucumber seeds because it’s dangerous, but allows in person lottery ticket sales and When the State tells you it’s dangerous to go golf or fish alone but they can get make up and hair done for 5 TV appearances, it’s not about your health.

Where we go from here

Qntfy will continue to analyze and provide daily reports, and do further analysis to improve our reporting. Qntfy is actively working with partners in the non-profit and public sectors to put these insights in the hands of individuals and organizations best-positioned to act on them. **Follow us for updates. If your organization would benefit from this data, reach out to us at covid19@qntfy.com**