Interesting point about the amount of experience influencing the effect on people. My father in law was paratrooper in Korea and in the artillery for Vietnam Nam. But he said the fact you could never get away from the possibility of combat made Viet Nam worse. Yeah the effect on medical people is a huge worry to me. It is happening in Italy now, with medical people quitting or taking leaves of absence. I know my niece, cousins and friends are all feeling the strain now. One of my former runners who is a nurse and had two tours in Iraq and Afghanistan (one as a medic and one as a nurse) says the last couple months have been harder. My niece was wounded in Iraq and said the same thing. I hope your son is doing ok.One thing that is really concerning me is the strain on some medical personnel that some seem to completely disregard. My youngest son's grandfather on his mothers side was a helicopter mechanic in Vietnam. He has had some issues with PTSD. Another relative was a soldier in WW2 (Many years deceased now) He had very little affect from his time in combat and he was actually in the trenches. It was always an argument about how soft the Vietnam vets were. The WW2 vet would just rip on the Vietnam vet about being soft. Long story short is that the helicopter mechanic in Vietnam saw 10 times the combat that the WW2 Infantry man did. A little more research and we found that WW2 vets in actual combat would probably be in 10 days of battle in a year. Only 10% of those in the military saw any action in WW2. In Vietnam, 60% would see combat and they would be in over 225 days of combat in a year.se.
I'm hearing that some of these ICU doctors and nurses are seeing 10 years worth of trauma and stress in a few months. They might get out of it when this is all said and done.
If current plans go forward I am expecting it to be a problem in schools as well. When students and teachers start going to the ICU it’s going to ramp the stress levels. We will be dealing with the psychological effects for a long time.