HIVE

Hey man, you good with the epidemic and all?

Yes, I'm healthy (though a bit overworked). I hope you're good too?

Yeah, for the time being at least, I am

I hope it's not just "for the time being"

Well, remains to be seen. The risk is pretty high when you have to work

At times like these I'm really grateful that I'm not working with infectious diseases, but mental health issues

Which themselves could be a risk because of poor hygiene and whatnot but since they are usually not urgent cases, I can imagine.

Not really. I work in a closed ward, where people are staying for a few weeks and since we're generally avoiding admitting new people unless absolutely necessary and we've shut down any visitations and possibilities of patients leaving the ward, then it's actually the patients who are more at risk of catching the Coronavirus from us than us from them

Yeah, lol. Well, I guess you don't go near them aside from giving them medication and stuff.
Not sure how "unstable" they are there.
They're chronic, I guess, not acute?

Yes, chronic. We do have talks, but we set aside a separate room for that and the doctor and the patient literally sit on the opposite sides of that room Other than that... there isn't much contact.

Patient: "What's that sonny? Lemme get a bit closer so I can hear you."

Do you get anxious people because of the epidemic?

Oh, yes, there's a lot of people with anxiety issues right now, but we mostly give them meds (plus info where to get therapy) and send them home. We only admit those who are in a really bad shape.

That said, there's already an increase in suicide attempts - and I only expect things to get worse once companies start shutting down and people get laid off due to the crisis.

No acute panic attacks? Meds must be doing their thing.

Check the edit above If someone is really having big issues then we do admit her/him, but most cases are just people being generally anxious about the situation. At least for now - I expect things will get worse as more people get infected and the economy goes down the drain.

Yeah, it's a dire situation with general implications.

Unfortunately, it is and from what I can tell, there's no sign of things getting better in the near future. Our best hope right now is that the summer will slow the virus down a bit as the vaccine/medicine trials probably will take some time.

Yeah, and then you can't force people to be vaccinated with experimental stuff. Also, hopefully, it won't mutate as this stuff might start over even worse...

I heard that other SARS coronaviruses that are similar to the COVID one aren't really mutating a lot, so there's hope. Also, in regards to vaccines, once a vaccine hits the market, it has months of trials behind it, so that doesn't really count as "experimental"