The Daily Populous Saturday January 10th, 2026 day edition
Image from preview.redd.it and submitted by yousef-saeed

MfgLmt on January 9th, 2026 at 23:39 UTC »

If I remember the story correctly, this was in a ward where many patients were being kept alive with supplemental oxygen. Because of demands from the pandemic, they ran out of oxygen and every single patient in the ward died. Pretty fucking traumatic.

silveira1995 on January 10th, 2026 at 00:12 UTC »

Dude, i was fresh out of med school down here in brazil. It was just different. My mom got it, 30 days ventilated, prone, trach, the works... She got out of it thank god (and dexamethasone + good ventilation). I would come out of shift and go visit her in another hospital. She would need 30 days more of home o2, but can live without it now. This was in early 21.

There were days i lost 2 patients in a night, just me, not the whole unit, just me losing 2 people each night. People couldnt grief properly, it was all close casket for fear of transmission.

Family members couldnt visit, we had to call family to give news everyday, so they would leave their parents speaking and lucid (short of breath but very awake, although with 85% sats) and receive a call 1 day later that their loved one was going to be intubated, the next call would be soon and the news obvious.

There were a lot of peculiarities that were from covid that no other disease had: the very fast clinical decline, from speaking to vent in 24hrs; The thrombotic nature of the disease, people would just have DVT and PE`s left and right; the encefalopathy of the critical disease, you would see people in their 40-50`s in frank delirium, not that common in that age group; The autonomic sensitivity to sedation, you would give them midazolam (ketamine was lacking) and fentanyl in fairly low doses for intubation and they would just code and die right there. The need for intubation was far too related to high mortality. This became popular knowledge, people would call their loved ones before intubation, through the nonrebreather, to say goodbye, they were often right. We saved a lot of people dont get me wrong but There were a lot of dead people at my (public) unit at that time.

We had the impression that the virus just chose who it would kill and no matter what you did, good ventilation, good sedation, dexamethasone, DVT prophylaxis or anticoag, it would not matter. For scientific minded people, the impression of fighting fate was very unconfortable. Ive seen almost entire families die: father, mother and (obese but 28yo and without other comorbities) daughter once, leaving a brother orphan and without siblings.

Then the mRNA vaccines came, pfizer and moderna at first (at least to my unit). Few months later it was over, we dont have the luxury of antivax movements down here, few third world countries have. Havent lost a patient to covid in 4 years now i think. People still get it, a lot, but they are more often than not fully vaxed, so they get a cold or flu like disease.

I like to think i was very lucky in a way, i didnt lose close family and i came out a better doc and a better human i think. I have a far less idealistic and a far more realistic (and maybe cynic to a point) view of mortality, of medicine and of whats important in life. I dont think i came out of it traumatized although others very much did, no one left with the same perspective of the profession, thats for sure.

bobagremlin on January 10th, 2026 at 00:37 UTC »

Please remember that nurses and doctors were also catching the virus and dying.

Seeing so many patient die and wondering if you were going to catch it and die... no wonder that poor nurse had a breakdown