COVID-19 Update

I'll try to get back to my usual stellar presentation, but first I have to get a handle on what the fuck is going on with the reporting. It all seems pretty FUBAR right now.

"Having broken bones and bullets in me for a week now -

it's a little frustrating"

WaPo:

Man shot 6 times waits more than a week for surgery after hospital is overwhelmed by covid

Joel Valdez isn’t in the hospital for covid-19, but he’s feeling its effect.

For 10 days, Valdez has been in a hospital bed at Ben Taub Hospital in Houston awaiting surgery after he was shot six times outside a grocery store as an unlucky bystander to a domestic dispute.

“Having broken bones and bullets in me for over a week now, it’s a little frustrating,” Valdez told KRIV over the weekend.

He tallied his injuries, which include a neck wound and three gunshot wounds to a left shoulder that’s in need of surgery: “Everybody is really surprised I’m still in this bed a week later.”

Valdez confirmed Monday afternoon he was still awaiting surgery when contacted by The Washington Post, but declined to be interviewed on the record.

At Ben Taub Hospital where Valdez is awaiting surgery, the intensive care unit was at 103 percent capacity as of Monday morning, with 33 percent of those cases related to covid-19, a spokesperson for Harris Health System told The Post. Lyndon B. Johnson Hospital, the other public hospital in the Harris Health System, remains similarly stretched at 94 percent ICU capacity, with 54 percent of those cases covid-related.

- more -

One thing that should be addressed when we get to the other side of this pandemic mess is to look at the philosophy of trying to shoehorn American healthcare into a standard Harvard Business School operations model.

Pre-Pandemic, hospitals were running an average daily census of close to 85% capacity.

With just-in-time supply chains and as-needed staffing, it works OK for the most part (even though it treats the nurses like so many sweat shop kids, but that's something I can bitch about some other time). The point is that emergencies are planned for and gamed out, and the hospitals have contingencies in place for mass casualty events and other situations that require big scale-ups - they have reciprocal arrangements with other hospitals in order to meet what has always been a localized or, at worst, regional kind of problem - but when everybody everywhere has the same problem, the thing starts to break down.

We may be able to rationalize it away by thinking we're not likely to see another pandemic anytime soon, but let's not be silly - the shit that's coming our way because of Climate Change and the ever-present threats of armed conflict - both foreign, and homegrown insurrections right here in USAmerica Inc - we'd best be figuring some shit out.