Posted on 04/23/2020 7:36:41 AM PDT by Kaslin
Across the country, hospitals shut down 'non-essential' procedures in preparation for a surge of coronavirus patients that never appeared.
When the lockdowns began last month, we were told that if we didn’t stay home our hospitals would be overwhelmed with coronavirus patients, intensive care wards would be overrun, there wouldn’t be enough ventilators, and some people would probably die in their homes for lack of care. To maintain capacity in the health-care system, we all had to go on lockdown—not just the big cities, but everywhere.
So we stayed home, businesses closed, and tens of millions of Americans lost their jobs. But with the exception of New York City, the overwhelming surge of coronavirus patients never really appeared—at least not in the predicted numbers, which have been off by hundreds of thousands.
During a press conference Wednesday, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis noted that health experts initially projected 465,000 Floridians would be hospitalized because of coronavirus by April 24. But as of April 22, the number is slightly more than 2,000.
Even in New York, where Gov. Andrew Cuomo said last month he would need 30,000 ventilators, hospitals never came close to needing that many. The projected peak need was about 5,000, and actual usage may have been even lower.
Other overflow measures have also proven unnecessary. On Tuesday, President Trump said the USNS Comfort, the Navy hospital ship that had been deployed to New York to provide emergency care for coronavirus patients, will be leaving New York. The ship had been prepared to treat 500 patients. As of Friday, only 71 beds were occupied. An Army field hospital set up in Seattle’s pro football stadium shut down earlier this month without ever having seen a single patient.
It’s the same story in much of the country. In Texas, where this week Gov. Greg Abbott began gradually loosening lockdown measures, including a prohibition on most medical procedures, hospitals aren’t overwhelmed. In Dallas and Houston, where coronavirus cases are concentrated in the state, makeshift overflow centers that had been under construction might not be used at all.
In Illinois, where hospitals across the state scrambled to stock up on ventilators last month, fewer than half of them have been put to use—and as of Sunday, only 757 of 1,345 ventilators were being used by COVID-19 patients. In Virginia, only about 22 percent of the ventilator supply is being used.
Meanwhile, hospitals and health care systems nationwide have had to furlough or lay off thousands of employees. Why? Because the vast major of most hospitals’ revenue comes from elective or “non-essential” procedures. We’re not talking about LASIK eye surgery but things like coronary angioplasty and stents, procedures that are necessary but maybe not emergencies—yet. If hospitals can’t perform these procedures because governors have banned them, then they can’t pay their bills, or their employees.
To take just one example, a friend who works in a cardiac intensive care unit (ICU) in rural Virginia called recently and told me about how they had reorganized their entire system around caring for coronavirus patients. They had cancelled most “non-essential” procedures, imposed furloughs and pay cuts, and created a special ICU ward for patients with COVID-19. So far, they have had only one patient. One. The nurses assigned to the COVID-19 ward have very little to do. In the entire area covered by this hospital system, only about 30 people have tested positive for COVID-19.
I’m sure the governors and health officials who ordered these lockdowns meant well. They based their decisions on deeply flawed and woefully inaccurate models, and they should have been less panicky and more skeptical, but they were facing a completely new disease about which, thanks to China, they had almost no reliable information.
However, in hindsight it seems clear that treating the entire country as if it were New York City was a huge mistake that has cost millions of American jobs and destroyed untold amounts of wealth. Now that we know our hospitals aren’t going to be overrun by COVID-19 cases, governors and mayors should immediately reverse course and begin opening their states and communities for business.
Of course, some already are—and in a phased, cautious manner, as they should. But the overarching narrative that we all bought into, that unless we stayed home and “flattened the curve” our hospitals would be inundated, and if your kids got sick there would be no beds available to treat them, has turned out to be false. It hasn’t happened, and it most likely won’t happen, especially now that new evidence is emerging that suggests many more people have already contracted COVID-19 than previously thought, which means the disease might be far less lethal than we feared.
Public officials responsible for the lockdowns will no doubt claim that without these draconian measures, our hospitals surely would have been overwhelmed. And who knows? Maybe they would have. It’s an unfalsifiable assertion.
But at this point we should all be able to agree that the predictions were way off, and not just because they didn’t take into account stay-at-home orders or business closures, because they did. The experts, in this case, were wrong. The best thing governors and mayors can do now is admit as much, and start lifting their lockdown orders so people—including doctors and nurses—can get back to work.
We'll never know how it would have gone so it's impossible to prove/disprove any emerging hypotheses.
We have flattened everything, but given what the experts told us, the media cried, and the thoughts of our parents and grandparents suffocating to death the alternative appeared too grim.
Most of our recriminations from this point forward will be directed by a complicit media against Trump when the real villain was the CCP.
It may come as a shock that despite the intensive efforts made on hospitalized inpatients with COVID-19, the death rate will not be essentially different than patients treated as an outpatient. Put another way. Is anything really effective being done in hospitals that is making a real difference in ultimate outcomes?
Another of those dirty secrets. Hospitals have stopped doing money making procedures to prepare for the surge of covid.
The census is down at most hospitals, meaning, the hospitals are losing their shirts.
People showing up at these protests are starting to wave signs that say “Flatten the Unemployment Curve”.
More like flat on our backs.
Some fruit will come along any second and say how this could have been even WORSE, but make no mistake it REALLY IS BAD!!
And we should still all hide like b.tches under our beds and put off all other procedures until not one person with the virus is in a hospital.
Anywhere.
In the world.
My uncle used to like to tell a joke about the little bird who decided one Fall not to fly South. He watched as all those foolish birds wasted so much energy in their seasonal endeavors and enjoyed himself and his now greatly expanded domain. Then the snow came. When he began to freeze he considered flying South and tried to but he couldn’t remain airborne in the sky in the blizzard. He fell to the ground and was soon covered in snow. A cow came along and oblivious to his plight crapped all over him. He recovered his spirits being warmed by the cow crap and feeling much better began to sing. Which singing attracted a cat who ate him.
Moral: not everyone who shits on you is doing so maliciously and not everyone who pulls you out of the shit has your best interest in mind.
*** People showing up at these protests are starting to wave signs that say “Flatten the Unemployment Curve”. ***
There’s a facebook group for my locality. Many of my neighbors in that group worship DeWine and Acton. They post that little cartoon set to Laverne and Shirley, it makes me want to barf. Today, some idiot put a picture of a DeWine sweatshirt she and her husband bought.
I need to stay away from facebook.
Scenario #1) Too many in the population get the virus, they all rush to the hospital, overwhelm the system, make the doctors sick, and pretty soon hospitals can't function and the deaths spiral totally out of control.
Scenario #2) Not enough patients go to the hospitals, lots of beds are empty, insufficient money is coming in, and pretty soon hospitals can't function and risk going out of business.
Which scenario didn't happen?
Which scenario could do really serious long-term damage for our healthcare infrastructure?
We had to make a choice. We chose poorly. Let's reopen.
That is a great story.
Monday morning quarterbacks typically go undefeated, yet never wear the rings.
Heheheh. I've learned quite a bit about people I once knew. Knowledge is useful.
That’s a useless comparison, as only the most sick go in for in-hospital care.
I am a pool float nurse. I float to 4 hospitals. I have not worked in 6 weeks because the census in the hospital is so low they do not need me.
The doctors held off admissions for procedures that were elective expecting to see the hospital flooded with Covid-19 patients. They did not.
we are all going to be exposed eventually
so if you are predisposed to have a severe reaction to COVID, you are going to go through it, Whether it is now or 6 months from now.
All the lockdown does is slow the spread.
it does not prevent us from being exposed eventually.
there is only a few reasons to have a lockdown:
1- to prevent an over burdened health care system, so we can do a better job of saving those near death
2- to get to the vaccine point, so we can save people with the vaccine before they are exposed
The vaccine is too far out to remain in lockdown for it, so unless you are in an area with maxxed out health care with respect to COVID treatment... a lockdown has no good purpose.
We need to drop these lockdowns everywhere where we are not overwhelming our health care system.
Right now that’s basically everywhere
It’s a bad bug, no doubt about it. It will kill people. That’s what it was designed and built to do. But it’s not the Andromeda Strain. It can be survived and doctors have learned how to treat it for the most part.
It will not “overwhelm” the health system. And we can’t wait for a vaccine; last night some doctors were saying that we may not be able to create a vaccine. Physical containment is not possible.
Let it run its course. Take the pain that comes with it. Don’t try to pull off the bandaid slowly. Don’t try to slowly dip in the cold swimming pool. Tear it off; dive in. Just do it.
Another disastrous result of the Fauci-Brix Effect, which promoted the lockdown strategy for the Democrat Party’s plot against the President.
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