How has the coronavirus affected your personal life?

[RD.]

Alabama has no available ICU beds while thousands of students quarantine in New Orleans and Florida | CNN



Those unvaccinated against Covid-19 aren’t just risking their own health – they’re also jeopardizing medical care for others and fueling a surge that’s forcing more students to quarantine, doctors say.

Covid-19 hospitalizations have doubled over the past three weeks, with 83,693 people hospitalized this week, according to data from the US Department of Health and Human Services.



No ICU beds are left in the entire state of Alabama, the Alabama Hospital Association told CNN on Tuesday.“We in fact are in a negative 11,” Dr. Don Williamson, president of the association, told CNN affiliate WSFA. “In the Montgomery area we have eight more patients who are getting ICU care than we have designated ICU beds here. In other parts of the state, we have over 30 patients in hospitals, needing ICU care, who are not in a designated ICU bed.”Alabama has 1,557 staffed intensive care unit beds and on Tuesday, there were 1,568 patients in need of ICU care, Williamson said. The Alabama Department of Public Health said 2,631 people are hospitalized with Covid-19 complications.


In Tennessee, “We are prepared to deploy additional medical personnel from the Tennessee National Guard to our hospitals in greatest need of assistance,” the state health department wrote in a letter Monday.

In Kentucky, hospitals are starting to cancel or postpone surgeries that would require post-operative admission to the hospital, state Public Health Commissioner Dr. Steven Stack said.

“ICU and ventilator data – it is a vertical climb,” Stack said Tuesday. “There’s no sign it is abating. We are already just shy of our all-time record. Another day or two, we’ll be past that record for ICUs.”

 

[Rocksor]

Hello; I knew about some of this myself. I had figured it was a productivity or some such business model way of organizing the for profit parts of the health care system. Minimize the number of unused hospital beds and such. A buddy was dating a nurse and I got second hand stories.

Interesting that a surgical person could not replace an overworked covid people.

I think it was in a Dallas Texas hospital where over 100 nurses and staff lost their jobs because they did not want to be forced to take the shots. Even if by the standards mentioned on this thread they all must be dumb, such does not make sense. I can see such a move under normal circumstances, but the need for medical staff in a crisis pandemic emergency ought to give those in authority pause. It would seem forced vaccine compliance takes precedence over adequate staffing.
I must be missing something. All the rest of the staff who are vaccinated have little to worry about from the unvaccinated staff. The unvaccinated staff are willing to take their chances and are the only ones with something to lose. Even if the unvaccinated do get infected while at work that is not such a big risk according to what is being told. The word is all unvaccinated will get the delta, so why not let any work who are willing. They will be working with the already infected so not a risk in that area. Unless of course compliance is more important, which appears to be the case.

If the unvaccinated hospital personnel don't do all they can do to protect patients (like take a vaccine when eligible), then the hospital can be held liable by patients (who don't have COVID) and catch it, especially if the patients or their lawyers find out that the healthcare workers around them have willfully not been vaccinated.

 

[skjl47]

Seriously? The unvaccinated SPREAD THE VIRUS. When that happens in a health care setting, like a hospital, the system goes on critical overload. Maybe have a nurse explain this to you, as in someone that is actually working on the front line. Whoa .....

Hello; both the vaccinated and the unvaccinated spread the virus when actually infected. The vaccinated do not always show symptoms. It is my understanding there is a smaller surge than last winter going on now, but enough to stress the systems as you post so well. You have trained workers willing to do the job who are being sent home if they do not conform to a vaccine mandate.
It is also my understanding the wards are already heavy with patients infected with the virus. There may be some special circumstance I do not understand about an unvaccinated health care worker, I will grant that. My guess is they can do what was done in hospitals back before the vaccines.
It is OK to have a policy agenda which surpasses the need for workers if such is the more important thing. That choice has been made in some places.

 

[skjl47]

If the unvaccinated hospital personnel don't do all they can do to protect patients (like take a vaccine when eligible), then the hospital can be held liable by patients (who don't have COVID) and catch it, especially if the patients or their lawyers find out that the healthcare workers around them have willfully not been vaccinated.

Hello; This makes sense in the normal times of a fully authorized vaccine. Not so sure it will apply in the emergency use situation we now have. There are severe limits for liability with the emergency use of the vaccines. You have made the better point tho. I see some holes in this stance. The vaccinated are catching the virus and shedding it the same or nearly so.
Anyway I see the point you are making, I do not know the legal implications. Are you saying al medical workers have been required to take flu shots in the past? I took them when I was still teaching but it was not required.

 

[Rocksor]

Hello; This makes sense in the normal times of a fully authorized vaccine. Not so sure it will apply in the emergency use situation we now have. There are severe limits for liability with the emergency use of the vaccines. You have made the better point tho. I see some holes in this stance. The vaccinated are catching the virus and shedding it the same or nearly so.
Anyway I see the point you are making, I do not know the legal implications. Are you saying al medical workers have been required to take flu shots in the past? I took them when I was still teaching but it was not required.

My brother was told (and voluntold sternly) to take the flu shot when working with vulnerable patients, particularly since he was working with patients recovering from surgery. He hates taking the flu shots/sprays since he always has a reaction to them for 2-3 days (lethargic, very minor fever ~100F). Nurses have to be vaccinated for other viruses like measles, and keep their immunization up to date, according to my brother.

 

[Ulu]

I can’t believe you guys are talking about how smart or stupid PhD’s are.

The problem is no different among clerks, truck drivers and production line workers. It’s not education or IQ, but a matter of trained response.

The reason people are not taking the vaccine here is because the US government has lost their trust completely. And because our reach is so broad that it surrounds the earth in many ways, this sentiment is not restricted to the United States. People around the world do not trust what comes from DC. From what I see, well over half of them, Both here and abroad do not believe what anyone “with a platform” tells them, unless they are pre-conditioned.

There is no reasonable intercourse of ideas with most people. As you speak to them you can tell when the conditioning takes over as the mind shuts off.

Since I was a child, 60 years ago, it was almost a joke how much propaganda there was on television and print media. Even as children we understood that most advertising is misleading and even fake.

We understood what slander was as well. The stuff about comparing famous people to Hitler and Stalin and Mao (Criminals so famous that they only need one name...) Didn’t just start last year folks.

The slander has been so sick and so thick, that people reading such things are most often loath to trust anyone here in public life, appointed, elected, celebrated, elevated or anointed, as it may be.

Events of the past 10 months have done nothing but reinforce this effect. Even half the people taking the vaccines in America do not believe they will help, or actually believe they can make them sick, but they feel pressured to take the vaccines and so they do.

Only half the people taking the vaccines are willing, conditioned participants in this exercise.

People of opposing political parties in America are screaming at each other to drop dead because they are the wrong color, party, sex, or religion. Those folks don’t care about dialogue anymore. When they say “we need to have a national conversation” about something, what they’re really saying is they want to spread more propaganda to support their position.

This is really obvious to a lot of people. They don’t believe that they are ever going to get the truth from anyone about anything important, including rtheir health care.

. . . and some patients have had to wait several hours for emergency room beds. . .

I have never been to a hospital for an emergency when I did not have to wait. Clearly this could not improve during any broad crisis.

Particularly when a huge portion of our society is totally prejudiced against science, technology, mathematics, medicine, engineering, and any kind of occupation that they see as elitist, supremacist, etc.

For five or six decades people have been fed by the television on examples of evil people in government, law, medicine, (amazingly even engineering—and we are usually totally ignored by the public unless something collapses ) who take a hard fall.

The TV has been telling people what and who is cool, (they are) and, who the nerds are: the people who study and refine and research, and bring us the 21st century of super cars and super communications and super stars who lead their fanatic cohorts of admirers.

Nothing now really matters, except that the people who have pandered and bullied and pressured and intimidated the Public, for my entire life, find that Half the people don’t want to listen. Now the whip comes out.

 

[RD.]

It is also my understanding the wards are already heavy with patients infected with the virus.

No hospital wants anyone that could potentially spread germs, especially covid germs, at work. Only a VERY small portion of most hospitals are typically set up for incubation etc. Millions of folks in hospitals that do not have covid. Our most recent outbreak here at work was caused by an unvaccinated staff member. It's all fun & games, until people start dyeing.

 

[RD.]

I can’t believe you guys are talking about how smart or stupid PhD’s are.

I think that only one person here was considering that, and it certainly wasn't me. lol

 

[RD.]

The reason people are not taking the vaccine here is because the US government has lost their trust completely. And because our reach is so broad that it surrounds the earth in many ways, this sentiment is not restricted to the United States. People around the world do not trust what comes from DC. From what I see, well over half of them, Both here and abroad do not believe what anyone “with a platform” tells them, unless they are pre-conditioned.

What I can't believe, is how some folks don't seem to understand the part in the TOS here regarding politics. Most here understand plenty well the whys & why nots of what is going on behind the scenes. We just aren't allowed to discuss it.

 

[pacu mom]

No hospital wants anyone that could potentially spread germs, especially covid germs, at work. Only a VERY small portion of most hospitals are typically set up for incubation etc. Millions of folks in hospitals that do not have covid. Our most recent outbreak here at work was caused by an unvaccinated staff member. It's all fun & games, until people start dyeing.

Nosocomial infections