I don't mind weighing in.
Nobody is discounting for a moment the concerns of our nursing colleagues, who are the backbone of the emergency health care system—truly, no argument.
The reality of it is that we need to keep a bit of perspective on this, and I think that may be a little bit lacking. Ninety per cent of the people who get this disease are going to have a cough, a cold and a runny nose. Between 7% and 10% will end up in hospital and certainly some will end up in the ICU, and the case fatality rate is going to depend on their age. If we choose to go with N95s and all manner of maximum protection at an early stage of the disease when we're not sure of the disease prevalence, are we going to end up putting somebody at risk when they do go to intubate or perform chest compressions if we've burned out all of our available supply?
You're a physician. I'm a physician. We know that the science on this is a little sketchy. This is a disease in process. It's rapidly evolving and our understanding is evolving, but we have to protect to save lives. To be sure, we have aerosolization concerns during invasive ventilation, intubation and cardiac arrest, but do we really want to burn through our precious supplies at this point in time to prevent somebody from getting a cough or a runny nose?
I don't want to be flippant. I'm just trying to be very straight here. We have to keep our perspective.