This also gets back to the “I know better than the professionals” idea. Magiver has apparently realized something, from his comfy computer chair at home, that all the epidemiologists and hospital administrators never did. He’s just that smart, figuring things out through LOGIC and stuff, which is why he’s not citing these logistical realities he insists exist.
Silly hospital administrators! Silly epidemiologists! Silly governors! If only they’d asked Magiver, they would’ve seen the easy solution to the problem that terrified them so!
One at a time. A hospital in NYC ran low on oxygen earlier this month and had to move 28 patients. It took aircraft from six states. Hell, Hopkins sent one, which meant it wasn’t available for anyone who needed it in Baltimore. The median cost for a not-out-of-the-way ride is $40k: 10.1377/hlthaff.2018.05375
There were only about a thousand aircraft available nationwide in 2015.
I learned today that hospitals in NYC can’t have rooftop helipads; patients are sent by ground to and from JFK.
Interstate patient transfers are actually great idea. Let’s go easy on Magiver… he is only inches away from getting the point that this is a great example of why we need a national health system with broad centralized authority.
Just tack it onto the patient’s medical debt. That’s not the state’s problem! Everybody needs to save up $40k in anticipation of needing air ambulance transport out of state in the midst of a generational pandemic.
Oof. Sort of knocks a hole in the Manhattan Airlift theory. And this at a time when ground ambulances were at such full capacity that they couldn’t serve all emergency calls.
I guess they’d retrofit taco trucks to move ventilator patients, right? Taco trucks have electricity and tubes and stuff.
Oof there’s probably a level in hell where they intubate you, **stick you in a taco truck, but you can’t have any tacos **because you’ve got a vent down your throat.
Cmosdes, I think your question boils things down to the nitty-gritty because, for far too many, that is reality. That’s why I believe that, gradually and cautiously, we must reopen the economy even though more may die because of it than would otherwise. Keep in mind that, even if things open up, it still will come down to the personal choice of every citizen as to whether or not they venture forth. It’s a risk vs gain game.
Scenario: “If I stay home unemployed, we eventually get evicted, and my family ends up in a shelter full of people we don’t know. My family gets COVID-19 anyway. I will risk going back to work.”
I have been fortunate enough to not miss a single dollar during this entire ordeal, and could stay in quarantine forever if necessary. So, I’m not going to condemn the people who feel they have to risk going back out there. I just can’t do it.
Is that something your are deducing or have you seen some information to support that? I don’t want to call for a cite, but that is just not what I would have thought. I know a lot of people get into worse health situations because of not treating things early, but I wouldn’t think that was a major reason for uninsured dying. Not calling for a cite, really.
I did address COBRA, and even with increased unemployment that isn’t going to be a priority for anyone. I addressed the other insurance options in a rather snarky way, saying that if it were so affordable we don’t need universal health care. More politely, we just disagree on this. If a family is unemployed and the prospects for a job are slim for many months, health insurance is not going to be a priority. Especially not at hundreds to thousands a month.
I never claimed it was. I did say that unemployment is costing lives, too, and there needs to be a balance. Mostly (not all, I know) of the lives we save through the lockdown are the elderly. Most. Most of the lives lost due to lack of insurance are going to be working class.
The basis for those numbers comes from IHME. As I told Banquet Bear, I really wish people quoting that cite back to me would have been willing to defend the 70k number predicted when I quoted it in another discussion. I was told the cite is obviously wrong.
First, that is only deaths through early August. We won’t know the real difference until 2 years from now. As with St. Louis and Philadelphia, history will tell us which made the better decision. An uptick in the number of deaths early on due to opening up is completely expected. The only real measurement is how many more end up dying overall. Sometimes you lose a battle to win the war.
There are now 70 restaurants open that weren’t open before. There are now more people employed and earning paychecks than there were last week. Roaring back? No one is expecting that. The death toll, even if higher early on, might just end up being about the same either way when all is said and done.
If I were claiming without any justification that what we are doing won’t change the the number that get sickened by this I can see why my position would be completely without any merit. But as has been cited, that isn’t a baseless claim. If that turns out to be wrong, which it very well could be, then that will change my thoughts on some of this. I still think we are being way, way too cautious at this point. When medical facilities are laying off doctors and nurses we hare gone too far. The US has just over 1 million cases. 40% of them are from the NYC area. That is a tiny, tiny part of the US. 600,000 cases out of 330,000,000 people. The infection rate in my county is 0.025%. There is room to start lifting these lockdowns which are killing the truly essential services, medical facilities, while enriching Home Depot.
I’m making more money thanks to the $1200 checks. Sorta. I donated that to some local people that lost their income. I’m sponsoring some local college students who are in severe financial trouble as a result of what we are doing. Many hundreds of students either don’t have a place to live, food, or the resources to attend classes remotely. I’m trying to help several of them by providing either computers, a weekly food allowance or help paying some utilities. But I can’t support my family and these students indefinitely. Certainly not for months or years.
Except that the governors in at least a few states have made it clear that it’s not the worker’s personal choice to return to work. They’ve made it clear that anyone who refuses will be kicked off of unemployment. So they’ll be going broke anyways, along with seeing a spike in new cases.
Or, you could recognize that “Starving or sick” is a false dichotomy, and demand better answers from those in power. Canada has implemented multiple, overlapping programs to keep people solvent during this crisis, including wage supports for employees of businesses affected, expanded unemployment coverage, and a plan to reduce rents for a lot of people and businesses, among other things. Governments at all levels have realized that this is the time for deficit financing to keep people alive, fed, and housed, for as long as we can while shutdown. And that includes the majority of politicians on both the left and the right sides in Canada. Those few who still have their heads up their asses trying to play politics as usual are getting push-back from all sides.
This crisis isn’t going to last forever, and none of the people who’ve lost jobs or businesses in the last month are to blame for their problems. The US is the richest country in the history of the world - it’s time for you to start acting like a rich country, and spend some money.
This will also mean that eventually we’ll need to raise taxes, once the economy recovers. And all politicians should be asked to pledge that they’ll do so. If they won’t make that pledge, it should be held up as the political cowardice that it is.
You’d think even the knuckle-draggers would finally see the need for increased taxation after the Feds dropped a cool trillion or four over a couple months.
But naaahhhh… instead we’ll likely hear calls for another huge tax-cut soon.
Isn’t that crazy? What I wrote? Doesn’t it seem like a joke or a huge exaggeration on my part? Yeah. I thought so too when I wrote it but then I thought about it for a second or two and realized–holy shit! That is actually what’s going to happen, isn’t it? They’ll be told by the Foxbox the only way the economy can ever get back on track is to give huge tax breaks to capitalists because they’re just dying to invest it all in shiny, Jesussy, white, Wal-Mart bowling poor folks just like capitalists have always done and always will.
Again, this is a false choice. The government can simply send people generous checks to stay home for 6 months. In this low interest-rate climate, this is the most favorable time in history to take on debt. This is the purpose of debt; to supply money when we don’t have it.
We don’t have to send people into dangerous working conditions. We don’t have to give people a choice between eviction and sickness. This is a lie being sold by Republicans because their billionaire puppeteers are allergic to taxes even though they hold enough wealth to live comfortably for 10,000 lifetimes.
You keep saying we can simply print more money, but where do you think that money is going to come from? Others have said we need higher taxes. In other words, taking more money from everyone’s paycheck to pay for all this. 3Trillion dollars divided among the 150 million working is $20k/person. I saw numbers in a quick google search of average take home pay around $50k/person in the US. So about 40% of the average would need to go to pay for this. That is about 4 to 5 months. Why everyone is up in arms thinking that they giving up their take home pay for the next 4 to 5 months “won’t do any good” is beyond me. It is exactly what is being advocated to help with this right now. Unless, somehow, when people call for more taxes they mean for someone else to pay it, not them.
Issue more government debt. This is exactly the reason debt exists, to pay for things you need before you actually have the money.
Not at all. As I already mentioned, debt would be paid back later, once the crisis is behind us and the economy is able to absorb it. Interest rates are already close to zero, so the service on that debt would be very cheap.
Again, government debt would come due in the future. And there’s absolutely no need to balance that debt on the backs of working people. If the 99% are so desperate for the stock market to go back up, then they can pony up and pay their fair share for a fair recovery.
To start with, if this government were run by people of high school graduate level intelligence, all the hundreds of billions used to bail out large corporations should be repaid by those corporations, so taxpayers are not on the hook for those funds.
But what are you suggesting here? Take back the $1,200 checks that have been sent out? Cut back on food stamps and unemployment for workers right as this recession is starting?
Why is it when I ask if people are willing to hand over their paycheck I’m castigated, but if someone else suggests a $20k/person tax that is reasonable? Either way, money is coming out of a working person’s paycheck and going to those that need it.
As of right now, we AREN’T all in this together to the same degree. We are having eggs and bacon for breakfast. The chicken is involved, but the pig is committed. There are a lot of involved people around here, but I don’t see many willing to step up to committed.
Massive? what massive? On any day we’re talking a few hundred. We have military aircraft and personnel dedicated to this purpose. Here’s a video of a C-17 being configured by Aeromedics for medical evacuation. You can google “medical transport aircraft” and look at companies who specialize in medical charters. This is in addition to the Coast Guard fleet of rescue helicopters and the regular medical helicopters in every modestly sized city in the US.
Seriously, we can call up 2 massive Navy hospital ships and then reconfigure them for virus patients but somehow the aviation equivalent is magic? The same civilian and military planes already in place specifically for medical transport?
I already cited the Governor of New York forcing care facilities to accept virus patients.
Putting that aside, can you show me a cite that municipal hospitals have the authority to refuse patients?