Please read the entire post - all the way to the end - before you judge me.
I need to rethink things. People have been shaming me and others for speaking up against the COVID-19 panics. Hospitals! Hospitals are overwhelmed! They may be right. I have to share some quotes about our hospitals I've been reading.
These are actual quotes from reports I've just read. I don't know why I've been ignoring this. Let me say that I'm serious about my respect for frontline workers. I'm confident THEY are NOT the ones calling for us to lose our jobs so they can do theirs. Politicians did that.
But it’s getting harder and harder to ignore the serious AND UNPRECEDENTED impact our hospitals our witnessing.
Read ALL THE WAY THROUGH.
"Tallia says his hospital is 'managing, but just barely,' at keeping up with the increased number of sick patients in the last three weeks. The hospital’s urgent-care centers have also been inundated, and its outpatient clinics have no appointments available.”
From UAB:
"Dr. Bernard Camins, associate professor of infectious diseases at the University of Alabama at Birmingham, says that UAB Hospital cancelled elective surgeries scheduled for Thursday and Friday of last week to make more beds available"
These are always disturbing:
“We had to treat patients in places where we normally wouldn’t, like in recovery rooms,” says Camins. “The emergency room was very crowded, both with sick patients who needed to be admitted”
Near me:
"In CA… several hospitals have set up large 'surge tents' outside their emergency departments to accommodate and treat … patients. Even then, the LA Times reported this week, emergency departments had standing-room only, and some patients had to be treated in hallways.”
MO is hurting:
"In Fenton, Missouri, SSM Health St. Clare Hospital has opened its emergency overflow wing, as well as all outpatient centers and surgical holding centers, to make more beds available to patients who need them. Nurses are being “pulled from all floors to care for them, “it’s making their pre-existing conditions worse,” she says. “More and more patients are needing mechanical ventilation due to respiratory failure”
South of Los Angeles. No respite there:
"From Laguna Beach to Long Beach, emergency rooms were struggling to cope with the overwhelming cases… and had gone into 'diversion mode,' during which ambulances are sent to other hospitals.”
When they turn ambulances away - you know something is afoot:
“Hospitals across the state are sending away ambulances, flying in nurses from out of state and not letting children visit their loved ones for fear they’ll spread… Others are canceling surgeries and erecting tents in their parking lots to triage the hordes of… patients.”
Warzone:
“There’s a little bit of a feeling of being in the trenches. We’re really battling these infections to try to get them under control,” McKinnell said. “We’re still not sure if this is going to continue …”
Texas:
"At Parkland Memorial Hospital in Dallas, waiting rooms turned into exam areas as a medical tent was built in order to deal with the surge of patients. A Houston doctor said local hospital beds were at capacity. Dr. Anthony Marinelli says they've seen a major spike in… cases. It's so overwhelmed the community hospital that they've gone on bypass at times -- that means they tell ambulances to bypass this ER and find another.”
Overwhelmed:
“Dr. Atallah, the chief of emergency medicine at Grady, says the hospital called on a mobile emergency department based nearly 250 miles away to help tackle the increasing patient demand. At 500-plus patients a day you physically just need the space to put a patient in.”
“We’ve never had so many patients,” said Adrian Cotton, chief of medical operations at Loma Linda University Health in San Bernardino County.”
Outdoor triage:
“...at least one hospital has set up an outdoor triage tent to handle the overflow of people” “In Long Beach, hospitals have started visitor restrictions. In the South Bay, a conference center has been transformed into an ambulatory clinic.”
No in-person visits. Things are serious:
We have signage set up all over the hospital to inform patients that, if they have any family members with even signs of symptoms, not to visit” “Loma Linda emergency physicians are seeing about 60 more patients a day than usual, Cotton said. About 150 patients have so far been treated in the tent, which is staffed according to the number of people inside. It’s expected to be up [for months].”
Big increases
“As the main emergency room gets full, patients are moved to the tent. For example, a patient who comes in with a broken arm is likely to be treated inside the tent, he said. Visitor restrictions have also been implemented. The county saw a 300-percent increase”
Right down the street from me:
“Overflow tents also have emerged in San Diego County hospitals. Though they haven’t pitched tents, most hospitals across Southern California have set up overflow areas inside their facilities.”
Our workers are incredible and I know they've been trained to deal with this. But maybe the lockdown folks are correct. Maybe we opened up too quickly. Maybe we should stay in shutdown mode. I mean nothing like this has ever happened to our hospitals before?!
Except these are all quotes from the 2018 flu season! (example) Healthcare workers are amazing. I know they can do their jobs without the rest of us having to forfeit our lives. No more lockdowns. Get the kids back to school. We got this.
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Oh thank you for re-posting this! I have tried endlessly to say that over-crowding and overwhelmed hospitals is nothing new. I was a EMT-Paramedic for 12 years, and ERs going on divert (don't bring us any patients) was a regular thing. I've also sat with my mother in ERs for 6, 8, even 12 hours AFTER they decided to admit her before they had a bed ready.
When we locked down for 15 days to slow the spread and save the hospitals, one would think they would have started to prepare for these surges. They've had almost 20 months - and they still aren't ready?? AND they are firing staff over vax mandates while they are already under-staffed??? None of this makes sense. None of anything regarding the pandemic makes any sense.
As a nurse who worked critical care in Houston during the H1N1 outbreak, this is what I've been saying for 18months. We lost LOTS of people during that outbreak. I saw 2 pregnant women and their unborn children die within a shift. We were slammed. Yet, no businesses closed, no one wore masks outside the hospitals.
Life goes on.
Hospital EDs go on divert all the time. When a bad flu season arrives city EDs are crazy-busy. This whole thing has been politicized. We've allowed bureaucrats, politicians, and big pharma to make our medical system beholden to them instead of the consumer. We should be learning important lessons about socialized medical systems right now. Instead, I just see society doubling down on stupidity.
Oh thank you for re-posting this! I have tried endlessly to say that over-crowding and overwhelmed hospitals is nothing new. I was a EMT-Paramedic for 12 years, and ERs going on divert (don't bring us any patients) was a regular thing. I've also sat with my mother in ERs for 6, 8, even 12 hours AFTER they decided to admit her before they had a bed ready.
When we locked down for 15 days to slow the spread and save the hospitals, one would think they would have started to prepare for these surges. They've had almost 20 months - and they still aren't ready?? AND they are firing staff over vax mandates while they are already under-staffed??? None of this makes sense. None of anything regarding the pandemic makes any sense.
As a nurse who worked critical care in Houston during the H1N1 outbreak, this is what I've been saying for 18months. We lost LOTS of people during that outbreak. I saw 2 pregnant women and their unborn children die within a shift. We were slammed. Yet, no businesses closed, no one wore masks outside the hospitals.
Life goes on.
Hospital EDs go on divert all the time. When a bad flu season arrives city EDs are crazy-busy. This whole thing has been politicized. We've allowed bureaucrats, politicians, and big pharma to make our medical system beholden to them instead of the consumer. We should be learning important lessons about socialized medical systems right now. Instead, I just see society doubling down on stupidity.