56 ICU beds remaining in LA County. <2.7% capacity.

[duenor]

There has been some commentary to the effect that ICU is always more or less like this, comparisons to seasonal flu (all of whose strains, incidentally, can be traced back to the 1918 H1N1 - it never really left), etc. A more learned statistician probably can come up with better figures than mine, but here is what I found with regard to nationwide occupancy. https://www.pnas.org/content/117/16/9122 That 65% routine rate compares well with the LAC ICU occupancy data (see dashboard), which was also ~60% at the start of the pandemic.

The “normal” ICU utilization rate target is 85%. Leaving that detail out is deception by omission.

Would you please share where you got that figure? The 65% I cited is from the NCBI; I'd be interested in seeing better data if it is available. Note that there is also a difference between target rate (which presumably is what a hospital wants to have to make more money) and routine occupancy rate (which is how much is typically actually utilized). There is also a very significant difference between 85% and 97.3+%.

I literally said target rate. Once again, you are being purposefully obtuse. Hospitals WANT AND PLAN to have a rate of 85% in the ICU for profitability.

You're not making very much sense. What are you objecting to as being "purposefully obtuse"? Have you been able to find where you got that 85% number from, by the way?

[Transient]

Here in San Diego ICU beds at 17% remaining. Hospital beds at 75% (as of yesterday).

OC reported 75% capacity for hospital beds and 11% of ICU as of 12/12:

I'm in San Diego, too. The father of my son's best friend is an ICU nurse. I usually see him on Thursdays. Last time we talked he said work has been very busy.

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[Transient]

So you're saying that when California setup a dozen temp hospitals all over the state earlier this year it was all for propaganda purposes because they could not staff them?



Makes perfect sense.

It should be noted that military EMFs (Emergency Medical Forces) were on standby for those field hospitals. Lack of need prevented activation.

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[duenor]

Yeah....real world experience and reality are foreign concepts in academia. Not welcomed, not tolerated.

You conveniently left out the following sentence:

The idea is made all the more ridiculous since we are talking about a regional crisis spanning vast amounts of territory.

[bigbossman]

You conveniently left out the following sentence:

You have demonstrated very well that you know nothing about hospitals.

[Wordupmybrotha]

Not a good time to get hospitalized right now. There's a shortage of healthcare providers.

[Bangzoom]

from 2018
.

[theLBC]

duenor once again takes the title from balgor for stupid post of the year.

they are always busy during flu season, mr. genius.

[JonChimpo]

[Den60]

I'm in San Diego, too. The father of my son's best friend is an ICU nurse. I usually see him on Thursdays. Last time we talked he said work has been very busy.

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Yes, it gets busy this time of year. Look up "hospitals are overwhelmed" in a google search and you will find numerous articles on this for various years going back long before COVID. Back in 2017-2018 we were using surge tents in parking lots because of the flu.

[duenor]

Nope. It'd be like trying to argue with a gun control advocate who lists numbers of car accidents, shark attacks, and HIV infections, then demands to know why we're not carrying firearms for THOSE dangers.

[BakoJ]

Both. Adult ICU is ICU. The days when Covid19 patients had their own negative pressure rooms is long gone. We're making do with portal HEPA air filters, much like the ones people have in their house to deal with wildfire smoke.

With regard to "just add more" - we can always build more emergency facilities (although we have not). But you can't build more staff, and specialized equipment is also difficult to slap together. There's a reason why travelling nurses can now make 8-10k per -week-.

With regard to the early emergency facilities, they were chartered and designed as overflow for NON COVID19 patients, remember? It wasn't until late in the deployment, about three weeks before the comfort left, that they were allowed to see a single COVID19 patient. With the exception of Wisconsin, AFAIK there are no emergency facilities being constructed.

There are also, AFAIK, no convalescent facilities for non acute COVID19 patients who need a place to recover without infecting their families (or others in their nursing homes). Hospitals are not convalescent facilities - the traditional model is to release patients to SNFs for recovery. However, you then run the risk of what happened in NY.

I worked to help set up temporary hospitals in Florida and Texas back in March. Everything you've written here is false and misleading. We had doctors, nurses, staff and supplies in place within 48 hours of a request. And we kept those staffed and supplied through the end of July, when we moved them to where they were needed.

This has been said over and over - almost all cases require no hospitalization and simply rest and treatment of symptoms at home. The overreaction to this virus has a direct relation to far worse problems, like depression, suicide and avoidance of routine medical care. We could discuss the damage to the economy and to our children's education.

You, your friend balgor and a couple of others are all regurgitating the same media-driven panic reporting which conveniently ignores what's going on the in the real world.

Your chicken little act is more like chicken ****.

[duenor]

I worked to help set up temporary hospitals in Florida and Texas back in March. Everything you've written here is false and misleading. We had doctors, nurses, staff and supplies in place within 48 hours of a request. And we kept those staffed and supplied through the end of July, when we moved them to where they were needed.

This has been said over and over - almost all cases require no hospitalization and simply rest and treatment of symptoms at home. The overreaction to this virus has a direct relation to far worse problems, like depression, suicide and avoidance of routine medical care. We could discuss the damage to the economy and to our children's education.

You, your friend balgor and a couple of others are all regurgitating the same media-driven panic reporting which conveniently ignores what's going on the in the real world.

Your chicken little act is more like chicken ****.

And your weak counter argument is unsurprisingly devoid of both facts, details, and citations. Usually, when someone says, "this is not true", that person then presents an argument and evidence to the contrary.

Here, you claim to have helped build temporary field hospitals in FL & TX back in March. Based on that experience, you say that what is happening right now Southern California is not actually happening, that all the numbers and data and public databases are all just false. And how do you know that? Because you helped build some temporary field hospitals in FL & TX about 9 months ago, when the average number of new cases a day did not even come close to the average number of deaths we have today.

So, I'll throw it right back at you - what you're asserting is false, misleading, and ultimately harmful to the people and the economy that you imply you care about.

[balgor]

I worked to help set up temporary hospitals in Florida and Texas back in March. Everything you've written here is false and misleading. We had doctors, nurses, staff and supplies in place within 48 hours of a request. And we kept those staffed and supplied through the end of July, when we moved them to where they were needed.

This has been said over and over - almost all cases require no hospitalization and simply rest and treatment of symptoms at home. The overreaction to this virus has a direct relation to far worse problems, like depression, suicide and avoidance of routine medical care. We could discuss the damage to the economy and to our children's education.

You, your friend balgor and a couple of others are all regurgitating the same media-driven panic reporting which conveniently ignores what's going on the in the real world.

Your chicken little act is more like chicken ****.

12% of cases end up hospitalized and it's been that way since March.

https://apnews.com/article/pandemics-sacramento-coronavirus-pandemic-california-gavin-newsom-f91b910c27d425ef6835cc0bcba29ac4

"After nine months of the pandemic, they recognize about 12% of people who test positive will end up going to the hospital two to three weeks later."

Where did you come up with your supposition, "almost all cases require no hospitalization and simply rest and treatment of symptoms at home."?

The rest of your argument is directly from OAN, Newsmax, or whatever terrible YT program you watch. Suicides are not up, I wrote a whole thread on it. You wouldn't believe or understand the research anyhow. Gee, you think depression and avoidance of care maybe just maybe is directly related to the pandemic? It's hard to have elective surgery or routine care when the hospitals are jammed.

Denying the pandemic = Denying Reality.

[BakoJ]

You're right - I'm going to have a hard time reciting suicide rate statistics since those are reported by the CDC two years behind.

Here's reporting from Fresno County in the summer.

https://abc30.com/amp/coronavirus-suicide-covid-pandemic-fresno-county/6315879

And here's reporting from Vox that discusses the rise of mental illness in direct relation to coronavirus and the prevention measures.

https://www.vox.com/platform/amp/22174464/covid-cases-anxiety-depression-mental-health

Let's discuss education, which you ignored in your criticism of my post. Hundreds of thousands of students are failing. In the high school district that my son goes to and my wife teaches at, 3/4 of the seniors are currently at risk of not graduating. CPS reporting due to both abuse and suicidal ideation is up 25 percent. Here's some reporting from California sources that you should find credible.

https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2020-11-02/failing-grades-surge-poor-la-students-covid-19%3f_amp=true

https://www.mercurynews.com/2020/11/01/coronavirus-failing-grades-spike-with-fall-term-distance-learning/amp/

As for my experience in Florida and Texas from March to July, I witnessed first hand the expected initial surge. During that period, neither Florida, nor Texas locked down like California and neither had the spike in hospitalizations. I can only quote myself from on the ground, first hand experience.

So if California continues the same draconian lock down measures and cases grow while people and businesses are locked down, then what exactly is the point of destroying our children's education, mental health and our economy? Based on CA statistics, cases are increasing in spite of these measures, which are more stringent than when we first learned of the virus.

Since we're on a discussion forum, here's my opinion based on real world evidence and my gut, which has never failed me: were going to have people get sick regardless of how strictly we lock down. And it'll keep coming back because we aren't closing down air travel from other countries or closing our borders.

The only way I see through this is to just let it run its course. People will die. But to me, someone who has worked battling Covid, it seems the cure is way worse than the disease, especially with less than 2% mortality rate.