53: LIFE-SAVING VIDEO! Warning from US Surgeon Dr. Michelle Savu in Beijing, China Novel Coronavirus

Stop acting like this isn't in your community just because people haven't been tested because it is in your community most likely. Do not be fearful. China has done and contained this well. Don't stock up on toilet paper. We never ran out of food here in China. It wasn't really the problem. The problem is to try to make people safe. I recommend for sure if you're sick or you're going to some place that's crowded, you need to wear a mask because someone in the crowd is going to have coronavirus. One thing the mask can do is keep you from touching your mouth and your nose. Here in China those things are working. We're taking temperatures even to get into my apartment you're taking temperature. We can tackle this but we can't tackle it with the way that our government is telling us. This is not a surprise to the CDC and that's their job to be ready for an epidemic but guess what they've already let us down. Oh ha ha ha here's the deal you can't do what you did in the past because this is the novel coronavirus. Novel new. It's not acting like diseases in the past. It's new so you got to take on new techniques and you got to take on what worked and what worked is what's happening in China. Hi my name is Michelle Sagu. I am a U.S. ward certified and trained general surgeon who's been working in Beijing China for the last two and a half years and I am very concerned about the world's response to the COVID-19 disease. So I thought I would just give my opinion and it's an educated opinion. I don't mean to criticize. I want to just give information and what I think is happening especially in the United States which is concerning me now. So today's number it's March 14th 2020 and we're in the middle of a coronavirus crisis pandemic now. Basically the world has looked at the measures that China has taken and they've called them something called draconian which means very harsh and and yet they are not acknowledging at least I don't think my country's has acknowledged that they were very successful. I do think that the WHO leader from Canada Dr. Awad has acknowledged that the China has China has done something that's unprecedented. They were able to contain the virus very quickly and as a result they decreased the total number of people who died from this virus and the total number who got the virus by acting very quickly to quarantine people quarantine whole cities and I think most of the United States and the world knows that now. The problem I'm seeing is the lack of intensity and response from the United States and I think the lack of dissemination of information and I just were making this video just to disseminate information and because I think that the United States people are much smarter than what they've been given and my concerns with the United States started with the first cases as they got reported in the Seattle. You have to understand my son was here in Beijing with me and I sent him home with teacher friends who are all doing online education anyway so I sent him back to the United States and they live in Seattle so I was very interested to watch what happened in Seattle. Once I saw what happened in Seattle it upset me so much and concerned me so much that I realized it isn't true that the CDC is doing the right thing it isn't true that the CDC is prepared. So the reason I say that is the first death that happened in the United States in Seattle in the nursing home right after that I watched via YouTube a woman had just come out of the same nursing home and she had just visited her mother elderly mother in the nursing home. She had no idea that there had been a corona related death in that nursing home and she had no idea that there was danger to both her and her mother. Quite frankly that would have never happened here in China. As soon as there was a confirmed coronavirus death then Chinese officials would have completely shut down and quarantined that facility. They would have quarantined all the health workers in the facility who are at great risk and likely the ones who brought the the virus in from the community and they would have absolutely not let any visitors come in. So not only did the CDC fail that nursing home instance that was my alarm bell that I had believed that everything that the U.S. had been told we're getting ready we're ready. Then once they said they didn't have the coronavirus testing kits out I became even more concerned and realized they don't have a handle what's going on and rather than criticizing what China is doing I think that we need to follow what China is doing. So basically what's happened in the United States is the epidemiologists have been telling the the advisory team the whole time and said look the regular flu they've already lost 14,000 people in the regular flu those epicenter in Wuhan they've lost about 2,500 people that's where the flu that's where the coronavirus started that's probably the worst of the worst so since they lost 2,500 we're not going to do quite the draconian mess that they did in China because we don't think that we can and we don't think we need to or we're concerned about the stock market I'm not sure and so basically they just calculated there's a calculated risk on the experts part in the United States and said okay let's say we lose twice as many people in this coronavirus thing we lose 5,000 people okay we're willing to accept that because we've already lost 14,000 or so from the normal flu season that's what I believe happened so take it for whatever it's worth. Now however right now today looking at the worldometer site on the number of new cases in China are 11 11 in the whole country I live in Beijing it's a it's a city of 21 million people the whole time from the beginning of this virus now we're into nine months nine weeks of the quarantine or so we've had eight deaths eight deaths in a city of Seattle has 20 or more deaths already 30 I think in a city of 700,000 people that it doesn't take a scientist it doesn't take an MD to understand wait a minute there's something seriously different about what's being done the U.S. has decided that they're going to take the backstage approach of well we'll continue to let people travel we know it's already into community spread one thing you can understand about the epidemic is one it starts with cases goes to clusters and then goes to community spread they know in the United States it's already to community spread and they keep saying well our numbers are low our numbers are low we're not too worried this is what the the White House is saying the numbers in the U.S. reported today 2,291 about 3,000 cases but here's the point but there's 600 new cases in the United States over the last 24 hours the reason the numbers are low in the United States is because they're not testing the numbers are likely 10 to 20 times higher than those numbers the U.S. task force knows that it's community spread they know it's going through the communities they estimate on the west coast that it spread eight weeks before it actually started to hit those nursing homes and why did the nursing home people die they died because they're older they've also been telling all the Americans you're going to die if you're older this is really only affecting no that's not true the the first the first person who died in the Philippines flew from Wuhan to the Philippines he was 41 years old he looked like he was getting better and then boom in 24 hours he died it is not just old people who are dying from this the truth is yes the numbers are lower than this influenza season but I think it would be better to educate educate the Americans as to the true risk and let you decide what you want to do my parents are in the United States they're in their 80s and they are I've told them to stop going outside stop going to church stop going to any unnecessary thing and of course older people go to doctor's appointments which my parents are doing so doctor's appointments you need to be wearing a mask because where are sick people going to go the difference between this virus and the other viruses that have come in the in the past are that it is spreading in patients before they have symptoms this is not like the influenza virus the normal flu season virus the flu season usually doesn't pass until someone has symptoms so at least they know oh I'm getting sick I better take precautions this virus is spreading in people that are not sick and we know that that is not an iffy thing anymore the other thing that can happen is while the children are not getting sick they can and are getting infected they're just not getting sick from it however they can infect other people China 80,000 total it spread to Korea their neighbors of course it spread the total today in South Korea is 8,000 it spread to Korea before it spread to Italy the number in Italy today is 17,000 what's the difference in the response the difference in the response is Korea acted more like China and Italy took the stance that the U.S. is taking so I need the Americans to know here's your choices you have to decide which one you're going to do are you going to be Italy with 17,000 new cases today no new cases 2,500 in the last 24 hours 17,000 total now here's the point Italy's population and Korea's population are about the same Italy's I think 61,000 million no 61 million and Korea is 51 million but their responses to the outbreak were completely different they have tested 200,000 people over 200,000 people in Korea they allowed people to drive by with their cars they would take a swab from their mouth and they got the results in an hour in Italy they didn't do that in the beginning they like the best most of the western world just said well we're weighing the risks we're the experts okay here's the deal you can't do what you did in the past because this is the novel coronavirus novel new it's not acting like diseases in the past it's new so you got to take on new techniques and you got to take on what worked and what worked is what's happening in China now you can say don't wear a mask well the reason the masks are working is everyone's wearing them so someone who's sick and they don't know they're sick they're keeping from spreading it while they don't know they're spreading it so if you wear a mask it's 60 effective they wear a mask it's 60 effective you effectively have cut your wrist down in half we're reusing masks don't think that we're just wearing them once we don't have that many masks either instead of the surgeon general saying to the united states public oh ha ha ha people stop buying the masks we need them for the health care professionals the health care professionals and the cdc should have had this under control and had warehouses stocked harvard has a warehouse of stocked supplies for epidemics just like this this is not a surprise to the cdc and that's their job to be ready for an epidemic but guess what they've already let us down they don't even have enough test kits to start testing people the numbers in the united states are not realistic numbers they just haven't tested people so korea looks like they've got it under control because they locked down their system they locked down their country they closed the schools and they took immediate action china italy is is frightening right now and if you talk to the icu people i listened to a jama podcast yesterday with a live with an icu intensivist care very intelligent very well respected um uh icu intensivist from italy i think it's dr chuchino cuchino and he said we are in trouble now and we are doing there's no treatment for this the only lay people believe we're going to get a vaccine lay people non-medical people those in the medical world we know we're not going to get a vaccine fast enough to keep people from dying i wish our government would come out like the uk government came out yesterday and said look we're in the middle we're not testing you because we already know lots of people have it 80 of the people who get this disease are going to have a mild disease and that's why the united states isn't doing much about it because they said okay 80 are going to be okay but 12 are going to get a serious disease and they're going to need some kind of support supplemental oxygen something else going on and five percent are going to be serious and they're severe and they're going to be on ventilators we need to be ready for this we don't have enough ventilators for all the people who are going to get sick if if if you get the numbers like china let's just say you get 80 000 in the united states there's 1 billion people over a billion people in china there's about 330 million let's just say because u.s hasn't locked down that they get somewhere near the number 80 000 so you say five percent of 80 000 are going to be severe that's eight thousand is ten percent and four thousand needing respirators at the same time ventilators that's why we we're not ready for this my suggestion to the lay public is uh stop going to restaurants stop acting like this isn't in your community just because people haven't been tested because it is in your community most likely do not be fearful china has done and contained this well they have already shut down they built these temporary hospitals in one week 10 days and they've already shut down the first hospital because they no longer need it we can tackle this but we can't tackle it with the way that our government is telling us i'm just giving you the information you do what you want with it the cdc has already let us down they don't have the equipment out that people will be fired over this i guarantee you they're not admitting it now but trust me by the end of this all they are going to be fired i can't believe my colleagues here in china my medical colleagues have said to me what is happening with the u.s did they already give up the u.s has decided it's so wise that it's going to rely on things that are from past epidemics and they're playing the numbers the epidemiologists are playing the numbers they know people are going to die and they know not all of them there are 70 80 so my advice to you you have an older person in your family 70 or 80 they need to stop all activity they don't need to be flying anywhere they don't need to be on cruise ships they don't need to be doing anything they can order online they can order their food in they can and and the younger generation needs to help them learn how to do this i recommend for sure if you're sick or you're going to someplace that's crowded you need to wear a mask because someone in the crowd is going to have the coronavirus and we don't know who's going to pick it up you might and someone else might not but if you're outside it's less dangerous because more air particles moving if you're in a confined space less dangerous those who are going to larger meetings churches i suggest the churches invest in churchonline.org or zoom meetings and perform those online services doesn't mean you have to stop that's what we're doing here in china we're all very familiar with zoom now we have small groups studies with zoom churches coming from zoom or churchonline.org these are all set up and ready for you please stop start doing this please suggest to your communities to do this don't stock up on toilet paper you're we never ran out of food here in china you're not going to run out if we have a billion people more than a billion people in china you're not going to run out of food that wasn't really the problem the problem is to try to make people safe make safe eat at home stop close the schools but britain has probably been more honest with its people and said listen we're not putting you on a quarantine like in china because we don't think you're going to stick to it for eight weeks the peak in the united states is about eight weeks from now right now it's uh march 14th so the peak is going to somewhere be in may to june and they're predicting that also in europe so the highest number of people are going to be happening in may to june what we need to now do is decrease the height of the peak we know it'll be a peak but we want to decrease how many people are getting it and the way we're going to decrease social isolation distancing you need to stay six feet away from anyone that you're near wear gloves outside have hannah sanitizer washing your hands is the number way to prevent it having your kids wash your hands the number way prevent it wearing a mask is going to help you because what happens is you touch your face study's been done you touch your face 27 times um an hour and it's really hard to stop touching your face so the mask can help you to top stop touching your face because what happens is you can pick it up on surfaces you can pick it up from other people not just someone coughing and sneezing on you it's on surfaces so if you touch something and then you touch your mouth and you just inadvertently scratch your eye uh then you're going to transmit it into your mucus membranes nose eyes mouth one thing the mask can do is keep you from touching your mouth and your nose but if you're going to touch the front of the mask that's not a good thing either wear a mask as you like but uh here in china those things are working we're taking temperatures even to get into my apartment you're taking temperature take your temperature if it's over 100.5 that's a low-grade fever you need to call your doctor don't go to your doctor call your doctor and tell them i have the main symptoms are fever cough dry cough no sputum and myalgias which means you feel achy all over if you have a fever if you have a cough and you have a myalgia there is a high chance that you may have the coronavirus 80 of the patients are going to do just fine with the mild symptoms do not go to the doctor you are overwhelming the system call your doctor tell them what's going on and then they will instruct you to do what's next you don't have for my medical colleagues we didn't have the uh rna testing right away and we didn't do rna testing on all the febrile patients if the patient had a fever we had a designated fever area of our hospital we did a complete blood count looking for absolute numbers of lymphocytes which are decreased and we did a chest ct a screening chest ct to see if either one of those were positive then we would go on and send the samples off to the chinese cdc now we have antibody tests and i'm hoping the u.s can at least step up and get the antibody test because you can just send the antibody test off in your local lab in your own lab and if the antibodies are positive then you know that's a one positive step you put the person in isolation and then you send off the rna pcr to confirm that you have it so there's a lot of information but uh you can do this italy italy has a warning for the united states and the rest of the world you need to do what china did italy finally has done it talk to dr awol i hope i'm saying his name right he was with the world health organization that came to china and he came back very complimentary to the chinese people do not use your prejudice against the chinese people and their government to say we're better look at italy they have amazing doctors in italy and they are totally caught off guard they have more cases than korea more than double the cases of korea and we know that's true because korea has been tested make your own decision with in with accurate information i believe that the u.s population is smarter and more disciplined than our government is allowing for and i believe the cdc has definitely let us down as a as a precautionary measure then we need to take this into our own hands to help ourselves and our family we don't need to panic and we don't need to fear but we need to have information that's accurate and real and we need not to be told that this is not a serious issue and you need to know why the u.s is telling you these things the epidemiologists have given the numbers they've decided that's okay with them you make your own again i'm dr michelle sabu i'm an american surgeon deputy chief of surgery at an international hospital here in beijing i've been here since the outbreak of the virus and i'm a fellow of the american college of surgeons and i have seen what the chinese have done and i believe they've let's hope we can all weather this storm together thank you