Day 4: urgent care shift

An eerily quiet day at urgent care; I had arrived early, expecting for it to be absolutely bursting, and that I would need to be briefed on whatever new policies and procedures were in place as of the last time I was there... and it was empty. Anyone with any respiratory symptoms whatsoever was being diverted to a special testing tent at one of the other sites, and anyone without respiratory symptoms was, for the most part, staying put at home. I saw five people in the whole shift - a lady with an ingrown toenail, a lady with a possible ectopic pregnancy, a guy who needed his stitches taken out, a guy who needed a TB test placed, and a young woman with a bruised thumb (whose bruised thumb did not, hilariously, stop her from texting the whole time I was trying to talk to her; while I was examining her thumb I snuck a peek into her lap to look at her phone screen to see what it was that had her so engrossed: "I never kissed him or made out with him u have to tell her that it aint me i dont even like him that much..."). The rest of the time I sat and read the internet - often good things, about how the canals in Venice are actually running clear, with fish, and with the bottoms visible for the first time in decades, and how the skies above China are already clearing with all the factories shut down, and about all the kind things that neighbours are doing for each other and the creative ways people are finding to help each other and fill their time while self-isolating.
I suspect that, just as my phone calls with students from Friday do not require really any specialised knowledge (otherwise healthy person + fever/cough = stay home and self-quarantine), having a patient on a ventilator for coronavirus is not going to be hugely medically complicated for the bulk of them compared to what the average pulmonary/critical care doctor is used to, and that with a minimum of additional training it should be possible to get family practice doctors up and running to take care of some of the really sick people, leaving the really really really sick people for the pulmonologists and ICU doctors. Can someone please write the Idiot's Guide to Vent Settings for a Coronavirus Patient Who Otherwise Doesn't Have That Many Medical Problems?
I fell asleep while listening to a Margaret Atwood lecture on creating believable dystopias. Hm.