The news does not get better from there. Around 4% of the world’s population are Americans. Around 20% of positive Covid-19 cases are American cases, and worst of all, almost 26% of all Covid-19 deaths worldwide, based on what we know now, are dead Americans. Our friends, neighbors, and loved ones. On ventilators, they are unable to visit family, and knowing the end is likely near. Unfortunately, as Covid-19 is happening, 3 other disasters are happening at the same time, and one is an epidemic that would have been fighting for years now if any elected officials or voters had any interest in listening to experts in the field. The southeast coast has experienced a large, deadly, and slow-moving hurricane in the middle of this.
Many states are involved, but the people of Alabama and Florida know how bad things have gotten. While hospitals try to keep patients alive, a hurricane comes through a threatens life support, patient transport, and even access to life-saving medicine to name a few. The best drug rehabs in Florida have similar issues. They have to stay and care for patients, but they have all the same issues and it’s even tougher for some of them to screen for Covid-19. One Covid-19 case that slips through will shut a facility down, leaving all other patients at the mercy of mother nature and awful circumstance, and staff has to take all the same risks in or else they would be abandoning helpless patients. The best drug rehab in Florida, Florida Springs in Panama City, on the panhandle, has miraculously survived all of this. Covid-19 will be the greatest mass casualty event in the history of our great nation, there is no doubt, but eventually, addiction will take many times more lives than Covid-19 if people are not aware of substance use disorder and how to treat it correctly. For one thing, you treat addiction by getting professional help. Family secrets don’t cure addicts if anyone out there knows what I mean,
Don’t talk my word or opinion for it though. These words are from an internal medicine journal and I think they back me up, and I think other substance use disorder treatment facilities need to copy the best practices from the best drug rehab in Florida.
“With the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic projected to be the largest mass casualty event in U.S. history, large-scale efforts are underway to contain the spread through social distancing and to divert resources to acute care. Before the first COVID-19 case in the United States, a different epidemic—the opioid crisis—was taking the lives of 130 Americans per day ([ 1]). Given that infection epidemics disproportionately affect socially marginalized persons with medical and psychiatric comorbid conditions—characteristics of those with opioid use disorder (OUD)—we are gravely concerned that COVID-19 will increase already catastrophic opioid overdose rates. Besides the threat of infection to persons with OUD, there is a serious risk that system-level gains in expanding access to medication for OUD, conducting critical research, and exacting legal reparations against opioid manufacturers will all reverse. We call for urgent action to counteract these risks.” – Annals of Internal Medicine
By T.A. Cannon (Contact me at TACannonWriting@gmail.com
References
BECKER, W. C.; FIELLIN, D. A. When Epidemics Collide: Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) and the Opioid Crisis. Annals of internal medicine, [s. l.], v. 173, n. 1, p. 59–60, 2020. DOI 10.7326/M20-1210. Disponível em: http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=mnh&AN=32240291&authtype=geo&geocustid=s8475741&site=ehost-live&scope=site. Acesso em: 23 set. 2020.
