Help me out here: how routine is it for patients with an airborne disease with a relatively high mortality rate to be transferred across state lines?
You suggested that Gigo took a quote out of context. I’m guessing that context matters to you. So put what you said in context.
I’m not sure why you’re using far away states as a place to transport patients. But we’ve been juggling supplies around between states so your movie reference makes even less sense.
As an aside my governor worked with the FDA to get a company’s mask sterilization system approved and one of the machines was sent to NYC.
The Governor of New York mandated that nursing homes take these patients. He can just as easily mandate that Buffalo, Rochester and Syracuse hospitals take patients without ever involving Federal intervention.
:dubious:
And again, you are ignoring timelines, early on it was not as great as you picture it.
the same as it is for any person with a serious disease to be transported to a hospital that specializes in that disease.
that’s without any kind of national emergency behind the problem. Imagine if there was a pandemic and resources were shifted to where they were needed. You know, like we’re doing now.
Wouldn’t have to wait 60 hrs for a bed if the patient was transported to another hospital. which would have taken a couple of hours.
Again, that did not happen then, AFAIK a lot of the ambulances were already used at capacity for corona and other issues, the reality is that even on one very well-prepared place the system was overwhelmed and many were not transported and died.
Things got much better of course, but the point stands, there are many reasons why more people do die when the curve is not flattened and a big surge comes in, health workers get it too, one reason why that was not worse was thanks to the lockdown. Now if other items like masks, testing and contact tracing are deployed in large numbers then I do think that we can reopen with caution so as to avoid another surge in other locations of the USA that have even less capacity in their hospitals.
I don’t believe you. Wanna show your evidence that, again, patients with high mortality airborne diseases are transported the same “for any person with a serious disease”?
Because I think you wrote that without evidence.
The system became overloaded because they let it get overloaded. The time to do something about it is not when the hospital is at 90% and there is a likelihood it will go 120%.
and regardless of a single day overload we have the capacity to move people quickly.
We have a multi-layer private system in place to move patients. We have a large scale military system in place to move patients. We have a volunteer system in place to move patients. This is not a secret doomsday plan hidden in the bowls of Cheyenne Mountain. It’s a well known system that hospitals can avail themselves of either through private charter or coordination with Federal assets. You saw this with the 2 ships called up for support. we have the same thing with air support. Every time there’s a major disaster requiring outside help the US engages those assets.
Well, that is a different discussion then, the reality is that it was.
Quote for that? I did not said that.
Yes, we also have the capacity to get humans to the moon again, but it will not happen tomorrow.
IIRC I even pointed to you in a different thread that the ships came late. Good for the help then, but late.
The point then stands, because that did not happen early on.
You’ve never seen a transport helicopter before? These move patients, equipment and medical personnel as needed.
The same applies to fixed wing aircraft.
And the logical sequence of transport to free up bed space is to move the least endangered first.
But, if you think waiting in an emergency room for 60 hrs as GIGObuster cited is a good plan then state your reasoning.
My position is pretty clear. Use the assets available to move people as needed to surrounding hospitals. It’s a pandemic.
Buffalo, Rochester and Syracuse are way more than a couple of hours from New York City - Syracuse (the closest) is 250 miles, Rochester 330, and Buffalo 375.
Yes, you could transport patients. You’d need to send an ambulance on a 10-16 hour round trip, though. You’d need a driver and at least one person to assist the patient. If they’re sick enough to be hospitalized the need for ventilation might develop during the trip. So you’d need to bring a ventilator and all the associated supplies,
Then you’d need to get the ambulance, nurse and driver back to New York City. For the furthest destinations this might mean an overnight stay. So you’ve taken an ambulance, a driver,a nurse and a ventilator-all valuable resources- out of service for a full day at minimum ( two days to some of your proposed destinations) in order to transport one patient.
Yes, patients are often moved - sometimes long distances - to a place where they can get better treatment, usually specialized care. Usually those transports happen in opposite direction - they are moving patients from small rural hospitals to facilities in a larger city.
But the idea that it’s logistically feasible you move dozens or even hundreds of patients long distances during a health emergency doesn’t hold up to logical scrutiny.
the ships were a waste of money. At best they were to handle a worst case scenario. They were never a timely intervention and the cost of sending them could have been used to transport patients to existing hospitals. They were NOT sent for virus patients. they were sent for non-virus patients and had to be reconfigured to handle those patients once they got there.
Read it again. That is what people at the hospital reported. Of course since it showed that there were not enough beds, then it is therefore not conductive to the narrative.
for those distances you would use aircraft.
It’s precisely related to the narrative. NYC could have airlifted a substantial number of patients to other hospitals starting with those who were best suited to travel.
The alternative is a lack of appropriate care without sufficient ICU beds.
Again, this is NOT an unusual scenario. We transport critical care patients all the time because another hospital is better equipped to handle it
It is a narrative from fantasy island, simply because it did not happen when the system got very overwhelmed for a time. Unfortunately you can’t turn back time.
Well that was a whole bunch of non sequitur. I’m not saying you’re wrong, but you’ve offered zero evidence to support your claim, so I’m gonna dismiss it now.
The reason people die from lack of health insurance is because they don’t have access to preventive care, and by the time they find out something is wrong, it’s too late to treat it. Right now, no one has access to preventive care because it wouldn’t make sense for a healthy person to go for a check up and get a life-threatening illness.
Unemployed people right now do have access to health insurance. They have COBRA, subsidized health insurance under the ACA and Medicaid if their State offers it. When I last posted that, you only addressed the part about COBRA being too expensive, but with the increased amount of unemployment money, people can either choose to pay for COBRA or get a policy under ACA or get Medicaid if their State has it. Under every one of those scenarios, preventive care is covered. Even without health insurance, hospitals are required to treat people for life threatening illnesses which is pretty much the only thing hospitals are treating for now anyway.
Lack of health insurance is not the biggest killer during a pandemic.
Looking at the early signs of how the lifting of the lockdowns is working, I looked at what’s happening in Georgia.
According to one model, Georgia’s deaths will double over the summer with relaxed social distancing.
Only about a dozen restaurants decided to reopen.
50 owners of 120 restaurants did not open.
The Mayor of Atlanta is calling on people to stay home despite the Governor lifting the shut down.
A poll taken between April 16-20 shows that 87% of Americans support a shut down with some wanting stricter controls.
It’s still early days. But the start doesn’t look that promising for the economy to go roaring back with the possibility of the doubling of deaths in Georgia from the coronavirus.
The airlift capacity does not exist to have a massive airlift on the scale you’re talking about. You’ll need to show a cite that the capacity does exist.
Other hospitals wouldn’t have accepted the patients, and nobody had the authority to do so. You will need to show a cite showing who can command a governor or hospital administrator to accept overflow patients from another state.
That lofty-minded sentiment may be true. I wish they would speak more to the reality of “I can’t open my dining room because it loses money if I can’t cram it with people.”
Governors are begging businesses to operate at a loss, and/or put their employees at health risk just so that Republicans can claim a political victory of “opening the economy.”
Trump is using the DPA to keep meat packing plants open as well, relieving them of liability if someone gets sick. It’s downright ghoulish.
I’m not one of those lefties who fantasizes about general strikes, but I think it’s time for essential workers to walk off the job. They’re entitled to more pay for the hazard they’re taking on. It would be very interesting to see if Republicans are ready to violate the 13th amendment to “open the economy”.
And for all the pearl-clutching about the suffering from a closed economy, there’s a really simple way to fix this: send more checks. Send bigger checks. But send them directly to consumers and prohibit anyone else from confiscating them. Interest rates are near zero, this is the perfect time for the government to take on debt. This is exactly the reason that debt exists.