I work in an ICU in New York and this week has really been eye opening. Scary times especially for hospital workers. I feel especially bad for ICU nurses who spend a majority of their day going in and out of the rooms of COVID positive patients. I also feel badly for the ER staff because they are overrun and it is very difficult to protect yourself.
From my personal experience, it is worse than I initially anticipated. Largely because of the ages of patients were are treating. We had to transfer a very young patient with seemingly no medical history for ECMO and I have spoken with friends who has had patient in 30-40s pass away. We have about a dozen positive patients in the ICU, most requiring mechanical ventilation, and about 50% won't survive. If they do, they will have lifelong morbidity.
There will be tough decisions ahead. What is an appropriate period of time to leave someone on a ventilator as new patients are coming in with a need? There will be a lot of providers placed in ethically difficult situations.
I am definitely scared to go to work every day. For the general public, I don't think there is any reason to be in hysterics. Be smart, stay 6-feet away from others, wash your hands, and you should all be ok. The issues we are experiencing now is a direct result of us not taking it seriously early on (which most of us are guilty of) and that lack of testing. The message is now clear - we all have to be very careful, this is not a joke.