> And yet there is scant evidence hospitals ever were at risk.
What? Omicron absolutely crushed U.S. hospitals -- with some having to set up temporary emergency rooms in their parking structures. Many U.S. hospitals had to put off essential procedures and ran out of practically _everything_ (syringes, saline products, blood, etc.) during the last wave.
> Omicron absolutely crushed U.S. hospitals -- with some having to set up temporary emergency rooms in their parking structures. Many U.S. hospitals had to put off essential procedures and ran out of practically _everything_ (syringes, saline products, blood, etc.) during the last wave.
I don't recall this happening. Can you provide a source for this?
I haven't seen anything considered "essential" being delayed, but anything that was not "immediately, medically" necessary in Texas was delayed on order of the Governor: https://www.texastribune.org/2020/07/09/texas-coronavirus-ho... My mother is a cancer patient and frequently had to delay (what I would consider essential) treatments by request of her provider.
Anecdotally, as someone married to an RN, supplies were absolutely running low throughout the pandemic. For the first year they were limited to 1 N95 mask per week, they frequently ran out of specific types/gauges of needles and had to make do with what was available, certain medications were hard to come by, etc. She doesn't work a COVID floor but still more often than not had a double patient load compared to pre-pandemic levels, both due to more patients and less staff. It was also incredibly common seeing people in neighborhood groups trying to find available beds for their family members during our surges, as most people were told there was a wait list expected to last at least 24 hours before something would be available.
I was referring specifically to Omicron, so both of your links aren't really what I was looking for—thanks anyways.
My main surprise was OP's assertion that medically necessary supplies such as blood had run out during the last surge, but so far this seems unsubstantiated. As you mentioned, I was aware masks have been in short supply at points throughout the pandemic, but blood and masks aren't quite equivalent.
> My main surprise was OP's assertion that medically necessary supplies such as blood had run out during the last surge, but so far this seems unsubstantiated.
>> (January 13th) "We are being absolutely crushed," says Dr. Gabor Kelen, chair of emergency medicine at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine in Maryland.
They can't. You'll just get links to some NYT article whose main content suggests "we are preparing for a surge" or something of that nature.
I've yet to see any kind of actual study that compares hospital capacity during these "surges" vs hospital capacity in the "before times". Also I strongly suspect future research will show that most of the hospital issues were self-inflicted wounds. We tested everybody who came into the hospital and invoked crazy high-overhead processes for positive results irregardless of symptoms.
The entire two years of this I've been waiting for a single instance of an overflowing hospital with stretchers of people out the door... never seen one yet. There has never been a real issue of hospital capacity--at least in the US anyway.
> The entire two years of this I've been waiting for a single instance of an overflowing hospital with stretchers of people out the door... never seen one yet.
Image caption is: "A nurse walks inside a temporary emergency room, built into a parking garage at Providence Cedars-Sinai Tarzana Medical Center in Tarzana, Calif., on Jan. 3, 2021. Since Thanksgiving, cases have risen to the point where 80% of the hospital is filled with patients with COVID-19 and 90% of the ICU is filled with COVID-19."
Covid was the cause of the largest mass casualty death event in US history.
It's embarrassing people keep pretending like every doctor in nurse in the USA who has said their hospitals have been overrun with death for over a year now and is the worst they ever have seen are just lying.
I'm guessing this is just some kind of coping mechanism because it's too terrible to comprehend and don't want it to be true, but it is fact.
Your links mention nothing about patients receiving their care in temporary emergency rooms within the parking structure of the respective hospital, though?
> Since Thanksgiving, cases have risen to the point where 80% of the hospital is filled with patients with COVID-19 and 90% of the ICU is filled with COVID-19."
The confounding factor here is that this includes patients hospitalized for reasons other than COVID. A patient that had a positive test might not be in the hospital because of COVID, but good luck to anyone trying to tease out that data.
My father was taken to a hospital for a broken hip in December. There were no beds available. He had a procedure and was sent home. I have no news article to provide, only this anecdotal account. This is something that I can't imagine happening prior to 2020 unless a natural disaster (hurricane, flood, tornado) had occurred.
It happens all the time in flu season. You even get articles that read very much like the ones people link to with Covid. Funny nobody gave a shit about all those…
You don't run an ICU with stretchers out the door, because that's not how you can provide ICU treatment. Overflowing ICU means "queue of ambulances out front waiting if someone dies or doctors decide someone can be pushed to lower intensity care" or "patients being driven further away in the hope to reach available capacity elsewhere". And if you need an ICU, 10 mins, 30 mins or 2 hour ambulance driving time makes a lot of difference (and means the ambulance is blocked longer of course as well, again hurting other patients needing one).
And re general capacity: Someone I know spent a day waiting to be seen in an emergency room and then got sent home from the hospital with a (non-covid) lung infection with "you really should be kept under supervision, but we need the space for people who probably will die tonight if they are not here". He did make it (with help from family and some emergency intervention by a local doctor), but certainly had a higher risk than if he'd been kept in a normally-operating hospital.
Yes I remember a few similar stories that made front-page news on various establishment sites. Most of them were very similar:
- older person has some sort of non-covid related serious illness or injury
- can't get ICU bed in the "top" hospital in their area due to ICU overflows.
- Thus, patient sent to less renowned hospital where he eventually succumbs to disease or injury.
- Media blames Covid / unvaxxed for his death.
A couple points that they never mention:
- ICUs, by design, are usually at 90% full, so these scenarios happened before Covid due to just random odds of a few extra people needing ICU beds at some particular hospital in some particular week.
- If the media has to trot out stories of 70 year olds with chronic heart failure who may have been saved had they been able to get a bed in the nation's top cardiology department instead of merely some average hospital, then does it really represent a legitimate issue the rest of us should be concerned about?
It reminds me of how the media kept demanding we accept the narrative that Covid was super deadly to children, when by all accounts it's less dangerous than the flu, swimming pools, etc even BEFORE the CDC quietly revised their own numbers* downward. So they'd push some article about a 22 year old died of Covid. "Look - this virus will kill your kids toooooo."
And you'd actually read the article, and then realize it was some chronically sick kid who weighed 400 lbs and had suffered from severe respiratory and immune issues all their life. And you'd know - if this was the best example they could find to scare us - then you shouldn't really be scared.
The average ICU occupancy is actually ~ 70 %, to have some slack in it during the annual flu season. If patients have to be turned away because everywhere is full, then there's a problem. Also, under normal circumstances, people tend to spend only a few days in ICU, then they are either better or dead, but serious Covid cases require weeks of artificial respiration, even a few cases tie up a lot of hospital resources.
And what's with the focus on Covid deaths - Covid sequelae are a thing and can significantly affect quality of life. My colleague is in his mid-20's, in good health - he had a mild case last Fall and still hasn't got his sense of smell back. When you can't smell methacrylic ester you know there's a problem.
> The entire two years of this I've been waiting for a single instance of an overflowing hospital with stretchers of people out the door... never seen one yet.
Your following sentence refers to the U.S., but as for this one- this is exactly what's happening in Hong Kong right now:
They will overrun the ICU's with mild Covid symptoms? That was the problem during last year's big waves - overflowing ICU's combined with hospital staff out sick.
Look, it's a communicable disease. There's no need for healthcare staff to spread Covid to each and any patient that comes to see them. The phenomenon of asymptomatic/presymptomatic spread is well known with Covid.
"My Tinder date told me she has chlamydia, but she's asymptomatic. All good!"
Because such would imply mandatory unlimited paid sick leave, unthinkable in the current political environment. OSHA only recommends flu testing and leave for healthcare personnel, but they are a joke.
You can go to a hospital, and will be sent home if you don't need to stay in hospital, especially if the hospital has more urgent patients to attend to.
> Many U.S. hospitals had to put off essential procedures and ran out of practically _everything_ (syringes, saline products, blood, etc.) during the last wave.
Npr is a governmental new source and thie government has been pushing scare tactics to make people get vaccinated so unfortunately I rate this as zero credibility unless you show me actual data.
What? Omicron absolutely crushed U.S. hospitals -- with some having to set up temporary emergency rooms in their parking structures. Many U.S. hospitals had to put off essential procedures and ran out of practically _everything_ (syringes, saline products, blood, etc.) during the last wave.