My friends who work in medical fields are sending out personal stories of overwhelm. Individual exhaustion... hospital overwhelm. This is reducing the level of patient care, which means more “negative outcomes”. What’s a “negative outcome”? death? or permanent disability?
Here’s one account:
AZDHS you are not reflecting things accurately. You act like tent beds, hallway beds, doubling up ICU beds, and surge capacity, all with no staff, or no trained staff, to care for people means we still have beds. This is blatant misrepresentation. Numbers don’t speak for themselves and it is YOUR JOB to make sure the public understands this.
This is what my doctors tell me. I work in a clinic not in the hospital. I believe them they have no reason to lie…. ED beds in many hospitals now in hallways, some hospitals are doubling up on patient in single icu room which is unheard of. 4:1 ratio of ICU Pt to RN also unheard of. No trained icu RN so using students unqualified staff. No qualified doctors so using community doctor volunteers. Even if only at one hospital u know more are coming and this is what Ducey and our leaders were supposed to prevent.
... it’s disgusting. They count hall beds as beds. They make no mention of inadequate staff untrained staff. Appalling to me.
..that is reality not this half ass dashboard online. Just numbers no explanation. We saw NY and apparently they learned nothing. Literally 2 months ago. Learned nothing.
And remember when all these beds are full....heart attacks, strokes, bowel obstructions, other illnesses still happen. A week ago one of my docs helped find a bed for her son’s friends grandma who had a massive brain bleed and was told there were no beds.
This is what is happening.
So that’s the picture on the ground — that’s why:
Hospitals just asked the state to allow “crisis standard of care” ( triage/ or so called ”death panels”).
These are rules for who gets scarce resources (ICU beds, Vents, etc)
https://www.abc15.com/news/state/valley-hospitals-ask-for-crisis-care-as-covid-19-cases-rise
Now for the numbers which inadequately show the crisis:
(The true numbers are larger. It’s hard to get tested in PHX, and results are delayed 1 to 2 weeks. Reporting of deaths on the state site is also delayed up to 3 weeks.
AZ saw more death yesterday than any other state. More than CA, though we are 6x smaller. Our # of active cases is a bit less than Texas - a state 400% of our size.
Population: CA 39.5 mil; TX 29 million ; FL 21.5 Million; NY 19.5 million ;IL 12.7 Million;PA 12.8 million; MI 10 million; NJ 8.8 million VA 8.5 million
AZ: 7.3 million
This death number though larger than the trend is not an extreme outlier for us
We are 3rd in the nation for recent per capita covid19 deaths
And we haven’t even really seen the effects of the recent rise in cases on the hospitals yet… since the case numbers continue to rise so quickly
Number of active cases is seriously underreported, with 24% of PCR tests reporting positive results last week.
Even though we are under-testing, we had a record number of new cases again today, on a weekend, when usually numbers are lower
AND DOUG DUCEY IS A WIMP WHO STILL WON’T ACT RESPONSIBLY AND PROTECT ARIZONA’S CITIZENS!
HE WON’T SHUTDOWN BARS, OR DINE-IN RESTAURANTS!
HE WON’T MANDATE MASKS STATEWIDE!
Here’s my thoughts on Gov. Ducey:
“The banality of evil” describes him. I don’t think he’s actively cruel. He meekly follows Trumps’ orders. If that means twisting the facts, so be it. All the data is at his fingertips. He choses to ignore it.
“The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the convinced Communist, but people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction (i.e., the reality of experience) and the distinction between true and false ...no longer exist.”
― Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism
To quote Ducey’s himself:
“It's time to step up our actions and our responsibilities regarding this virus."
Yes, governor, it is time for you to put on your big boy pants and step up. In fact it has been for a month. Your failure to act is an action. If you have any conscience or shame left, I hope for the sake of the lives of Arizonans it beats out your obvious political ambition. Heck, even that’s lost. Trump’s sinking. WTF? Why do you continue to tie your future to his bloated dying carcass?