Why, have those responsible been held to account already? Have public-health officials been fired? Hospital administrators replaced? Governors recalled?
If that hasn't already happened, what makes you think it will? If it has already happened, then it must not have been catastrophic. If it's nonetheless a real, serious contingency, then surely someone came up with a plan to deal with it over the past eight months.
Is this a serious question? Who's going to pay for shutting off our economy to make these "personal sacrifices" being so heartily endorsed? The fed gov has spent literally v trillions on addressing this. Much of it has gone to healthcare. We've heard over and over again that a nurse is not a nurse is not a nurse. That we need "staffed" ICU beds, and though there are plenty of nurses, there aren't plenty of ICU nurses. That's absolutely a problem that could have been solved over the past months.
That's not remotely what I said. I said I'd it was a real problem if should have, and with proper planning, would have, been addressed already. If you're saying it's a real issue and if HASN'T been addressed, then that's a greater problem. There wasn't a vaccine until just over a month ago. What was the plan before that?
Assuming that vaccination will accomplish the efficacy "they" would have us believe, yeah...I have no problem with administrative, maintenance, or ancillary staff at the hospital getting vaccinated. The hospital has to run. For patients ill from whatever cause...COVID or otherwise. As it is...COVID is directly responsible for only a small portion of the service we render.
The difference here is the political overlay. It has colored the reported data both nationally and internationally and unfortunately it has driven a lot of our hysterical response to it. It's hard to know much about the reality of this disease other that the many distressing anecdotes we keep seeing.
If you build it, they will come.
Believing in Politicians is a futile exercise
CDC data says 13M doses delivered, 4.2M administered. (But some don’t believe CDC Data)
https://covid.cdc.gov/covid-data-tracker/#vaccinations
Cheers
Good, point, but I still don't think it should be that big a problem. I never see lines at the local pharmacy for shots, even though there is a big sign out in front... even now.
Hopefully that works better in Colorado than Texas. Almost every site listed here is only providing shots to their own employees. It's useful for knowing who received shipments but not for knowing where to get a shot.
I think it takes longer than that to train new ICU staff, so we're pretty-much stuck with the ones we have now for this pandemic. The best we can do is start investing in better healthcare capacity before the next crisis, and hope we have at least 10 years before it hits. The U.S., Canada, and the U.K. have all seriously underinvested in hospital beds for decades (under both left-leaning and right-leaning governments) to keep taxes low, and we're paying the cost now (with loanshark interest). I know this doesn't tell the whole picture—the numbers include all beds, not just critical-care ones, and our three countries invest more in home care as an alternative to hospital care—but consider the number of hospital beds per 1,000 people just before the pandemic hit:
I hope we don't forget and start shortchanging healthcare again as soon as the pandemic is over, or else we'll have the same problem next time.
No, we're not, as far as I can see. I hope that will change. Long-term investment isn't a great fit for politics, because politicians take all the blame for higher taxes right now, while their successors get all the credit for the new infrastructure in 10–20 years. In the end, though, that's our fault as voters — in a democracy, we get the politicians we deserve, and no better.
