Unfortunately in the American healthcare system our hospitals run between 70 to 85% capacity all the time. At least that is what my friends who run our local university hospital have told us. So we are either going to have to dramatically increase hospital capacity or tamp down the effect that Covid has on the system. If it wasn’t for Covid the system would be managing as it always has
www.marketwatch.com
Remember that guy is in the business of selling vaccineModerna CEO expects a second COVID booster will be needed later this year
Moderna Inc.'s CEO expects fully vaccinated people to need an additional COVID-19 booster shot later this year, as the efficacy of the first booster wanes...
Is Fall 2022 will be much better than last year as if all people are vaccinated then the virus will mutating into harmless like common flu by next Winter.
Fortunately, we have the capacity that we do. Other countries are not so fortunate, including western ones.
"No, I don't think COVID is here to stay. But having COVID, in the environment here and the world, is probably here to stay."
This makes no sense. Hospitals should have sick people in them every day of the year. In 2019, we would have said 100% of people hospitalized are non-COVID. A sign of actual normalcy would be that most of the time the hospital is operating at 90%+ non-COVID. The fact that we can only say 43% are non-COVID is the problem.
We are talking about New York State at the present moment which is reporting 85k+ cases per day and likely has upwards of 200k infections per day. Only 57% of the COVID hospitalizations being because of COVID changes the narrative to an extent. Sure, that 57% is might be what is pushing occupancy over the edge at the moment but that level of daily infections can't possibly continue for that long. If 200k get infected per day, every person will have at least short term immunity in 3 months.
This is correct. Hospitals will recover as they have after every wave. I don’t think anyone is debating that. This is just gonna be a big one. It’s just ramping up in most parts of the US and lots of unvaccinated countries around the world. That’s gonna be rough
With that kind of argument, you wouldn't have to take any hospitalization numbers seriously, would you. If it was 20% COVID you'd say its not enough to matter, flu seasons do as much. If it was 80% it would be the same "can't possibly continue for that long." What percentage would be worrisome to you?
And after so many people are so, so, so burned out. Medical errors happen, people aren't seen timely enough and the people potentially harmed aren't going to care that the surge lasted only 3 weeks instead of 2 months like the others. Staffing shortages are getting worse not better. Disney fans familiar with Kevin Yee's "Declining by degrees" observation could apply that to what is happening in health care. Failure isn't going to be some spectacular event obvious to everyone that it happened. Catastrophic failure might be, but do we need to wait for catastrophic failure? Isn't a more mundane appearing failure good enough reason to take notice?
Wow!! Should we also deny care to TYpe 2 diabetes patients since they did that to themselves ?
The EMTLA of 1986 forbids hospitals to deny care even if one cannot afford to pay.
Good because the though of ANYONE being denied care is a sad thought!
