Posted on 09/23/2009 7:06:56 PM PDT by Dementio
With scant public input, state and federal officials are pushing ahead with plans that -- during a severe flu outbreak -- would deny use of scarce ventilators by some patients to assure they would be available for patients judged to benefit the most from them.
The plans have been drawn up to give doctors specific guidelines for extreme circumstances, and they include procedures under which patients who weren’t improving would be removed from life support with or without permission of their families.
The plans are designed to go into effect if the U.S. were struck by a severe flu pandemic comparable to the 1918 outbreak that killed an estimated 50 million people worldwide. State and federal health officials have concluded that such a pandemic would sicken far more people needing ventilators than could be treated by the available supplies.
(Excerpt) Read more at propublica.org ...
“C’mon Granny, just TRY to breathe on your own. You can do it!”/extreme sarcasm off
LLS
This is right up Dr. Zeke’s alley.....scarce resource???
Babies and Old People hit the skids first....
It is either a trial balloon to see how far they can push us, or an outright attack on freedom of assembly and movement.
We will see.
As harsh as this article may sound the practice makes sense. And while it has the potential for abuse, I think the possibility of poor decision making by impassioned family members is much more likely.
Babies and Old People hit the skids first....
_______________________________________________________
That’s right. They AREN’T the ‘worker bees’ in the hive for ‘the collective’.
What began under George Bush as a way to prepare serepticiously for a coming biological attack from terrorists has burgeoned into a means for the fascist Obamasquad to arrange for martial law. With men like Cass Sunstein, John Holdren, and Ezekiel Emanuel advising the affirmative action bastard, is it surprising that the solution to the social security disaster is to not have that many reaching retirement to pay out to?
I wonder what criteria were used during polio epidemics when they rationed those old "iron lung" machines. They must have had some guidelines.
I also wonder what would happen to private insurance companies if a really bad flu epidemic hit the US. Would some insurance companies just declare bankruptcy and disappear in the night, the way some insurance companies do after earthquakes or hurricanes? Or would the government pick up the tab for preventing and treating the flu since it's a communicable disease?
You have to plan for overwhelming emergencies.
There could be a situation where there are more people who need ventilators than there are machines, in any particular hospital.
What bugs me is that the government wants to make the rules. I’d prefer to leave it to the doctors—with the courts following up if they behave with clear injustice.
And please, before I get flamed by those who would equivocate the preplanning described in this article with the death panels brought about by Obamacare - there is a huge difference between withholding medical care that would have been available if the government left health care alone, and a shortage of equipment due to a pandemic.
Headlines in the newspaper "WE ARE ALL GOING TO DIE......) someday..
“Flu Nightmare: In Severe Pandemic, Officials Ponder Disconnecting Ventilators From Some Patients”
In severe fascism, citizens ponder ventilating politicians and bureaucrats...
That’s right. They AREN’T the ‘worker bees’ in the hive for ‘the collective’.
That's how it works. If you have five ventilators and ten people who will die without ventilators, five people are going to die. Who deserves a ventilator? Grandma? A baby? A young adult female? A young adult male?
Ugly decisions sometimes have to be made.
How far or how fast?
Coin toss.
Well, how very OBAMA of them!
No other alternative. My guess is ECMO machines will be rationed first. Not as many of them, much more labor intensive to use and in the Southern Hemisphere, some patients were put on those almost immediately because their lungs were so full of snot mechanical ventilation would have caused their chests to explode.
Exactly. What else are they supposed to do? Jack up the cost of medical care by buying millions of extra ventilators that will probably never be needed? Obviously, in a major pandemic, lots of people are going to die, and it makes sense to prioritize saving the ones who actually have a chance of getting out bed and doing something with their lives.
Here's the problem. We have managed care, down to where there is no excess capacity in the system. New York only has enough ventilators to handle a 17% (15%/85%) increase over normal. Certainly not a pandemic.
I think the rationing plan is necessary. But the public would be better served by a plan to obtain and store excess ventilators and/or a plan to ramp production of ventilators. I see a new respiratory ventilator on Froogle for $2000.
Solution 1:Buy another 5000 machines for a cost of $10,000,000 and put them in storage. Then you would at least have a reasonable hedge.
Solution 2: For a cost of 17,000*$2,000= $34,000,000 you'd have all 18,000 machines available. It's probably not reasonable given the probable availability of vaccines.
Solution 3: Work with the manufacturer to develop plans for rapid ramping of production of the machines and/or possible cheaper stop-gap models.
The cost is probably neglible compared the lost taxes if those people die.
Yes, we’ve “progressed” to the point where we can delay death. Ultimately we will all succumb.
However, the decision should not lie with “officials” who can choose based on thier own criteria. It should be left to the individuals and their families with the advice of a caring physician.
That’s what they want to take from us.
Thank you for the sanity break. Everyone needs to take a freeking valium, and stop buying into the blatant media incitement of trying to imagine the scariest worst-case possibilities of everything.
Unless, of course, you want to image a city on fire, without water, and you're trapped in a high-rise building there when an earthquake hits, and as the building is swaying you see a television helicopter outside the window, but before you can be on camera you run to the restroom to brush your teeth, and there are three other people in there BUT THERE ARE ONLY TWO TOOTHBRUSHES!!!!
So I aks ya, WHO gets denied?!! Huh????!!! WHO??????!!!!!!
Not Good: http://http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2346771/posts http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2346771/posts
I have been reading posts her for many years and look at the screen name at the end and say yep that is that posters usual response.
I have just come across your posts here in the last few months maybe more and can say yep thats exactly how I would respond.
Thanks saves me from typing more than I care too at times.
How many ventilator patients can your local hospital sustain? One poor Brit teen in Greece I read about has been on life support for months.
death panels
The population of the U.S. is enormous compared to what it was during the polio scare years. Rationing just doesn’t mean then what it will mean NOW. Plus with all the illegals here now....
It may make sense to buy some additional ventilators, but as you have mentioned money is limited. Buying enough of them to deal with what may happen takes money away from what is happening.
Big Brother Zero is trying to get us used to the idea of pulling the plug on Granny. No doubt about it. Putting out scenarios where a choice would be necessary. Just like abortion in the sixties: “back alley abortions, 16 year olds dying” “girls having to cross state lines to get an abortion” etc. Worked then. Or Saturday Night Specials, which wound up banning a number of inexpensive well made pistols.
It would be outright MURDER that’s what it would be.
OH MY GOD WE ARE ALL GOING TO DIE AGAIN....LOL chill out.
Congressmen, senators and those who donated to Obama go to the head of the line.
yes - kinda like the decision to abort or not abort - like the mother that was pregnant with, I think 4th child. The father had congenital heart disease, the mother tuberculosis, and the first 3 children all have serious medical problems.
What are the odds that this child will also be sickly, using up valuable medical care?
So chose: 1: abort
2: don't
For those that chose abort - Congratulations.
You just killed Beethoven.
i.e., you may chose the the young adult female/male - who never contribute anything of worth to society - may even be a negative. You may chose death for an elderly person who still has a lot to contribute - or a toddler who would have grown up to contribute something of great worth.
To empiracally chose death because of age is ignorance run amok.
But there's an over abundance of that these days.
In the meantime, perhaps you should arrange not to grow too old - and/or,never get sick.
Not at all. You have 10 people who need ventilators and five ventilators. Five people will die. Who?
It's not making a choice to abort. It is making a choice that so one person can live, someone else cannot.
Do the senior citizens who voted for Obama know this?
The fed already makes the rules. To stay open they must pass inspections. Who do you think the inspectors are?
How would you treat them? You don't have enough ventilators for everyone who needs them.
Medical ethicists debate this scenario all the time.
Now Mrs. Brown, how did your husband vote in the last election? Did your family make the right campaign donations? We’ll make our decision after we have read through all of your husband’s e-mails, blogs and social networking sites as well as telephone records and text messages.
To me it seemed like immunity from a dead virus was safer than immunity from a live virus.
To my parents, polio season was very real and I remember asking my mother to be able to do something (cannot remember what) but she said "NO its polio season". It wasn't a scare** polio was deadly and if you survived many had to live in an iron lung for the rest of their lives...also those children that survived without needing an iron lung ended up crippled...
look what happened w/Katrina
Yep. And in a flu pandemic the same would happen. Too many people need too few resources. People will die. Who?
For the record, I'm not betting the farm on a flu pandemic. It seems like we have "flu pandemic scare" every year. And every year people die from the flu. Life goes on for the rest of us.
10 families and their physicians agree, they want to put the patient on a ventilator. There are 5 ventilators. What's your solution?
In this case people who have a responsibility to plan for the worst case in order to be prepared were reported on by the media. The planners did what they are supposed to do; they planned. The reporters did what they are supposed to; they reported. And I did what I was supposed to do; I considered the situation and said to myself; "sounds like they have that part under control."
I also repressed the urge to set the caps lock and hold down punctuation keys.
Please be more specific. What do you think would be murder?
Doesn't it seem silly for us to argue this after our government has just spent hundreds of billions of dollars on nothing that will benefit the American people? Think of all the good that money could have done, although I was against stealing it from us in the first place.
“With men like Cass Sunstein, John Holdren, and Ezekiel Emanuel advising the affirmative action bastard, is it surprising that the solution to the social security disaster is to not have that many reaching retirement to pay out to?”
I love the fact that now that the baby boomer generation, the very generation that spawned this disaster of a presidency, has come into the twilight of their years, they will be the beneficiaries of this “noble” move. They are the ones who voted for him, let them reap the whirlwind.
Do you think they’ll object?
Here is a little help, I don’t want to be on any damn ventilator...its already written in my will...chalk off this granny....you can have my ventilator...
Uh, imagining the worst case IS how they hype it in order to sell. And why should a flu need to be "sold"? To "protect" people? How? By convincing them to get vaccinated? Is that all? Or is it to convince them to go along with mandatory vaccination even though, as well as the specific legislation that completely indemnifies the vaccine makers for any deaths over a vaccine that contains known poisonous materials prepared with grossly inadequate human testing?
Yeah, I guess it WOULD take a lot of media hype, as well as calm, cool people saying "no problem, move along," to try to force the country into that level of suicide.
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