Quote:
Originally Posted by Mahler9th
Thanks for those links. I did not need them. Anecdotally, my neighbor just had his ankle fused. His son is an ER nurse at the hospital around the corner. They are not being overwhelmed.
We are in county with a lot of virus around, and it has been around for a long time (first US death was a woman that worked here and worked out at the same gym I used).
Apparently, I misunderstood you... that happens with Forum posts. So let's be clear: what do you think should be done that is not being done given that hospitals in some, many or most localities are not being overwhelmed by Cov-19 patients?
I am not unaware, I am paying attention. More so that can be simply expressed via Forum posts. But I do not see them as "battle lines."
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You appeared to be refuting the fact that hospitals had reopened for elective surgeries, hence the links. But then you turn right around and say you did not need them, thereby indicating you were indeed aware of this... I'm afraid it appears you are merely being argumentative. I hope that is not the case - like you say, however, much is lost in our forum posts.
What do I think we should do? I think we should fully reopen - all businesses, schools, public gatherings - all of it. There is little doubt that "the word is out" re the dangers of this pandemic, the at-risk populations, personal measures we should all be habitually observing by now, etc. The populace at large has been well educated with regards as to how they should be conducting themselves to minimize their risk. We should, as Sweden has from the beginning, trust them to be responsible and protect themselves. We should not be continuing to use even the slightest uptick in cases as justification to prolong our current state, much less, as as happened in some jurisdictions, use them to justify regressing to previous stages of lockdown or other restrictions.
And that returns to my original point - we have "flattened the curve" enough to where it appears we are in no danger, going forward, of once again "overwhelming" our health care system. If we ever really did that to begin with - I'm reminded of cases like the much ballyhooed hospital ship arriving to help in New York, and soon leaving for a lack of patients.
A couple of my doctor friends were actually furloughed for over a month earlier in the spring for that lack of patients. The hospitals in which they had admitting privileges were all but shut down, awaiting patients that never came. So they were allowed to reopen for elective surgeries. That was months ago, and our numbers of cases, much less hospitalizations, have been in steady decline ever since.
Washington State, where I live, dropped down into single digit daily deaths in July - from a population of 7.6 million people. Yet we hear about every single one of them, often to great fanfare if it happened to be some kind of an outlier, like a younger person. This in a state that averages 150 deaths per day by all causes, most of which obviously never will make the news. Yet
every single COVID related death is still being reported.
There is no explanation for this outsized coverage of what has become such a rare occurrence. No other explanation other than our insatiable desire for shocking or distressing news - both on the part of those consuming the news and those providing the news coverage. I'm no "conspiracy theorist" - I do not believe in this oft referred to, never named "they" - but there is certainly a human condition that drives this sort of thing. It's a self feeding cycle. We need to move on to the next "shiny object" and give this one a rest.
And, finally, I think it is all too apparent that there are those in power in this country who desire to make some "political hay" over all of this. They have found eager allies in the press, a press that, in my humble opinion, has, for the most part, devolved into more sensationalism than factual reporting. No one planned any of this - there is no "conspiracy" driving any of it - it's just a symbiotic relationship that has developed over time between the press, politicians, and a public all too eager to lap it all up. No one could have planned and organized this current situation - there are far too many "moving parts" - but it does exist. And it is feeding the panic because, well, that what it does best. Because it "sells"...