Open (More or Less) Post on Covid 6

[ecosophia]

The semi-open posts  I've hosted here on the Covid-19 narrative, the inadequately tested experimental drugs for it, and the whole cascading mess surrounding them have continued to field a gargantuan (and increasing) number of comments, so I'm opening another space for discussion. The rules are the same as before: 

1. If you plan on parroting the party line of the medical industry and its paid shills, please go away. This is a place for people to talk openly, honestly, and freely about their concerns that the party line in question is dangerously flawed and that actions being pushed by the medical industry et al. are causing injury and death. It is not a place for you to dismiss those concerns. Anyone who wants to hear the official story and the arguments in favor of it can find those on hundreds of thousands of websites.

2. If you plan on insisting that the current situation is the result of a deliberate plot by some villainous group of people or other, please go away. There are tens of thousands of websites currently rehashing various conspiracy theories about the Covid-19 outbreak and the vaccines. This is not one of them. What we're exploring is the likelihood that what's going on is the product of the same arrogance, incompetence, and corruption that the medical industry and its tame politicians have displayed so abundantly in recent decades. That possibility deserves a space of its own for discussion, and that's what we're doing here. 

3. If you don't believe in treating people with common courtesy, please go away. I have, and enforce, a strict courtesy policy on my blogs and online forums, and this is no exception. The sort of schoolyard bullying that takes place on so many other internet forums will get you deleted and banned here. No, I don't care if you disagree with that: my journal, my rules. 

With that said, the floor is open for discussion. 

Comments

[hearthspirit]

I know, right? The idea that this is a sudden problem caused by COVID is hilarious. Like they think none of us have ever sat in an emergency waiting room for more than five hours before.

Too bad they completely own-goaled themselves by relentlessly publishing data, and generally being themselves for lo these many decades, that demonstrate it ain't coof patients.

Number of ICU beds in the province, broken down by Health Authority, with their original predictions of what would happen in even a mild pandemic because of our very meagre supply of ICU beds: https://thetyee.ca/News/2020/04/02/COVID-BC-Hospitals-Mapped/

Daily updated cases and hospital admissions, filterable by Health Region: https://experience.arcgis.com/experience/a6f23959a8b14bfa989e3cda29297ded

34 hours, waited in 2018: https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/manitoba/emergency-room-wait-brian-sinclair-racism-1.4832755

Only 2 hours waiting for triage while very obviously in immediate peril from his diabetes, oh oops, that was even this year!: https://globalnews.ca/news/8115691/ns-man-diabetes-dies-waiting-for-care/

This one has an absolute litany of times this has happened at Royal Columbia in Surrey prior to 2017; which, strangely enough, is where my grandpa was once treated for his heart attack in the hallway, behind a temporary divider, for five days due to the shortage of beds: https://globalnews.ca/news/3347375/new-westminster-woman-dies-in-fraser-health-emergency-room-while-waiting-for-treatment/

Heck, I think pretty much no one who has lived in BC for any length of time could be lacking in their own copious anecdotes that will make them all very inured to this line of attack, even if they never read the news.

When my mom broke her arm 35 years ago, she was left in a hallway at St Joseph's in Vancouver overnight, until her IV bag backfilled with blood, and they actually only found her because my stepdad came looking for her. The woman next to her had a brain injury from when her john smashed her head in with a rock, so they just strapped her down and left her screaming without pain killers, because there was no surgery available (my mom said she recognized her: she was the only other person she had known in highschool whose parents were divorced).

Once, a friend of my aunt's showed up there with an infected insect egg sac in his hand (it was epic: he was a trail guide in Thailand, and had just flown home to visit. The doctor who removed it told him if anything burst out of it he was going to throw up on him) and he was the only one in the waiting room who got in because they really just wanted to see what the crap was going on with that hand - they sent home people with broken legs with tylenol, told them to come back in the morning. My MIL showed up at a Nanaimo hospital with appendicitis 10 years ago, and it burst while she was waiting to be let in, even though she was the only one in the waiting room, because they had no beds to admit her (well, that, and also because her doctor told her that it was probably just an ovarian cyst, because she was an old woman, so didn't bother palpating to check, thus ensuring she only got care at the very last possible second...)

[methylethyl]

Exactly. Even in the US, the ER situation is pretty bad, and has been for many years. My parents have a system for dealing with this-- Dad never goes to the ER by himself. She goes with him, and refuses to ever just sit and wait. She nags, fusses, talks to every employee in sight, asks to speak to supervisors, makes phone calls to people higher up the chain of command, and generally makes a complete nuisance of herself until Dad gets admitted because they need to shut her up. Dad's been to the ER a lot, so this is a well-honed technique for them, now. In the most recent episode, they wouldn't let her in the ER because of COVID rules, so she sat in the parking lot with her phone and launched a tactical assault on their phone systems. They admitted him in 30 minutes. She's done it for a few close family friends as well.

I feel like there's a promising side gig available there, for people with her personality type: $100 to meet you at the ER and make a huge embarrassing scene until you're admitted. "medical expediting service"

So yeah, it's easy enough to blame it on COVID, or on vaccine-related walkouts, but... is it really a new problem?

[temporaryreality]

I accidentally glanced at r/nursing where someone reported that a man died while waiting at the ER for admission for chest pain - and boy, all the folks there needed to take gratuitous potshots at the unvaxxed for making this happen. There was lots of invective - I guess if you're unvaccinated and show up for another reason, you're still wasting space for other patients... since those commenters knew the original patient's vaccination status even though the OP didn't mention it.

(edited to add - though perhaps given the cardiovascular nature of "chest pain," perhaps he WAS vaccinated)

[(Anonymous)]

Here in BC they keep predicting that the hospitals will collapse - with every wave.

The media is blaming the protestors outside hospitals across the country for upsetting the healthcare workers and making them want to quit.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/covid-hospital-protests-canada-1.6173437

The protestors are apparently antisemitic because some of them are comparing the treatment of themselves to jews in WW2:
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/ottawa/vaccine-protesters-holocaust-comparisons-1.6175321

Which is very crass of those protestors doing it, but when combined with everything else, like the following article, it reads like part of a coordinated smear campaign.

CBC is running articles comparing antivacc to addiction and blaming it on trauma.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/anit-vaccine-idealogy-likened-to-addiction-1.6171795

[weilong]

The last time I was in a hospital emergency room in the USA was in the 1990s, but I always had the impression that a six hour wait was pretty standard unless you were bleeding to death.

[methylethyl]

It's pretty standard even if you are bleeding to death, as long as you're not dripping on the floor. A hospital ER once sent my dad home with a ruptured spleen... because he was still ambulatory at the time, and couldn't reach his insurance card (wallets are tricky things when your wrist is broken...).

That was sometime around 1990.

[jpc2]

My experience ER in Colorado Springs back in July was actually rather pleasant.

My feeding tube came out and I was unable reinsert it and tape it in. Took half a day to get in touch with my GI doctor. He told me to go to the ER since it would take a day or to to schedule something. If the tube is out for too long the holes close up and it becomes knock you out surgery.

Walked over to the ER with the Tube in a plastic bag. It is only 6 blocks. This ER is a major trauma center. Walked in, maybe twenty people waiting, nothing big that I noticed. Checked in at the counter.
Not 5 minutes later they called me and went back to an exam room. Spent 4 hours laying there reading a book while they searched the hospital (and I think a couple of others) for a new tube of the right size. They would check with me every 20 minutes or so. They were unable to locate a proper tube and had to use a catheter that was similar as a temporary (it worked but not well). After inserting it they took an XRay to be sure of the placement and sent me home.

Went back a week or so later to out patient surgery and had proper tube inserted. That took less than an hour.

So not all ERs maxed out. This one seemed somewhat busy but not swamped. I usually see/hear about 6 to 10 choppers coming in a day. Yes, it was a simple problem and not life threatening. Don't know how the people who were there when I came in fared.

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