Rising Star
Related Posts
Bowl Leader
Bowl Leader
Bowl Leader
Bowl Leader
Coach
Additional Posts
Who gets the bravo award? How does it work?
What’s the Oliver Wyman post mba salary?
New to Fishbowl?
Download the Fishbowl app to
unlock all discussions on Fishbowl.
unlock all discussions on Fishbowl.
Pro
There isn’t a significant peak as compared to past surges among adults so there are really 3 issues: 1) staff more likely to get sick as omicron spreads more easily. This cuts down on capacity; 2) consistent surges are a significant capacity problem and have been for a while. Continually taking potential beds from other health issues for a third of every year puts a lot of strain on the system; 3) unlike most prior surges, there has been a significant pick up in hospitalizations of young children. There was a bit of a pickup for delta, but we’re now close to young adult ranges for the sub 5 range. So now PICUS are having capacity issues as well.
Chief
Staffing failures have been due to a flood of cases (and the corresponding isolation periods) more so than due to disease severity. Everything we’ve seen globally suggests Omicron is significantly less severe, though more transmissible. Pediatric hospitalizations continue to be significantly over counted in the US. Our primary reliance on vaccination to stop disease and disease transmission has failed less than a year into the vaccination campaign. It’s time to rethink our approach as the number of immunonaive people drops to near zero.
How do you know how full the hospitals are? I am not trying to be conspiratorial and I am not trying to accuse anyone of lying or whatever. But just, really think this through. At the national level, there are hundreds of thousands of hospitals in this country. Each one keeps track of their own records and they do a shockingly large amount of that tracking on paper. Everyday. They are supposed to report those records to the federal government agencies which make those records available in dashboards and statistics and such. Do you trust that data? I work at one company that has one unified management structure and one unified reporting structure, everything that all of our apps do is constantly reported in real time to our BI system, and that data is still constantly wrong for one reason or another. Why would you assume that the same dynamic doesn't apply to hospital numbers?
A greater number of people infected even with a smaller percentage of severe symptoms still leads to more people in the hospital. It’s also the most mild when people are vaccinated and it’s the unvaccinated taking up more beds in the hospitals. Oh and there are staffing shortages from people being sick and people just being sick of dealing with covid at the hospitals.
"You know it’s bad when they cancel “elective” procedures (which include not-so-elective things like a pacemaker, cancer treatment, and orthopedic surgeries)." And which bring in a lot of revenue for said hospitals
I have some insight from my limited circle of physician friends and family. It’s all staffing issues. Many of the staff are testing positive for Covid, and, following their own policies, these workers must isolate at home for a number of days and get a negative result.
Cool cool cool cool
Chief
The hospital issue is because people aren’t vaccinated
Pro
In the UK omicron surge, unvaxed adults were 5x more likely to be hospitalized (47% of hospitalizations were unvaxxed despite being ~10% of the adult population).
Rising Star
It’s primarily the psychosis induced from the last two years of absurdity pushed by governments worldwide. They NEED as many people as possible to remain fearful to facilitate their power grab.
Sounds like someone’s a little scaredy cat of an arm boo boo
Hmmm.
Pro
Using raw numbers is pretty dumb. 6x for New York is pretty.l consistent with the UK study which showed 5x.
Unvaxxed keeping themselves in the dark ages
No one in the thread has hinted at vaccinated people being above/beyond transmitting, so I'm not sure where you're trying to go with this. Seems like a strawman
Rising Star
It’s because if you have a heart attack and go to the hospital and they test you for Covid you will be admitted as a Covid patient.
Which they should…it’s different protocols when you have an infectious virus and are at a greater risk of death and also a danger to other patients
It seems that a smaller percentage of cases are requiring hospitalization…however, a small percentage of a huge number can still create a significant number of patients in the hospital.
Pro
The first thing this idiot has gotten right in years
You thought you did something... That’s actually Fauci proving that Rand Paul is profiting off all the crap he spews. That’s a donation button on the right edge…
Chief
Fewer ICU beds than ever before thanks to dire staffing issues and rent-seeking policies like reporting anyone hospitalized with Covid as a Covid hospitalization. The former is likely due to general pandemic fatigue, staff burn-out and senseless workforce policy like firing healthy unvaccinated coworkers but letting the vaccinated ones work while they’re testing positive. The latter has been going on the whole time but is just finally getting mentioned by the top brass. Surprise: $2T in free money getting pumped largely into already broken American healthcare corporations is actually not good for anyone.
Chief
Accounting for them is absolutely critical, no argument there. Inflating the numbers while you’re pushing them on the local (even national) news as a fear tactic to drive new customer visits is pretty shady. A VA study found around 50% of reported hospitalizations with Covid were not because of Covid. Percentages north of 50% have been reported in pediatric settings. Especially with omicron, the viral particles are everywhere right now so the odds your average kid with a broken arm pops a test during their visit are very high.
Pro
It comes down to staff shortages which leads to less beds in a hospital - most are going to the hospital for other reasons besides covid
Chief
About 90% of hospitalization and death are the unvaccinated. Which is bad in its self, worse when you compare the vaccinated population to the unvaccinated. The NYT article is behind a pay wall so I bring screenshots in a tweet. https://twitter.com/DLeonhardt/status/1480891185082286084?t=ZBVnonCuBLXhWh4FmQYLzw&s=19
People don’t know how to use the medical system. Omicron doesn’t replicate in lungs like previous variants, hence the vast improvement in mortality rates. I’d love to see some data on ventilator usage between the variants if someone can find it/is it available. That would tell you a lot about if people are actually going to the hospital when appropriate.
Limited sample, but good proxy. https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2022.01.11.22269045v1 Even with multiple times more omicron cases than delta, more delta patients were ventilated. ICU admission was ~4x higher for delta than omicron. Mortality was ~10x higher for delta than omicron. Length of hospital stay was 70% reduced with omicron vs delta
Hospitals won’t just admit you unless they’re a bit concerned about you living. Otherwise they’ll treat you as an outpatient. Hospitals are suffering staffing shortages and unvaxxed people are still winding up in the hospital. Also, some people, although vaxxed, still suffer COVID complications and wind up in the hospital, especially if they already have medical issues. Friend of a friend is in the latter category. And all of this is on top of the usual things that send people to the hospital.
Tucker or Joe?
My dad is the ceo of a small hospital in the Midwest. He said they’ve never had more critical covid patients than they do now (the previous high was 45 people at once and now it’s 65 people). They only have one room left that can be converted into a covid room. And they also have multiple staff out who tested positive.
Yeah, I may have used “critically” incorrectly. There a ton more people who visit the hospital but don’t require an overnight stay.
The hospital capacity issue is mostly a red herring used to gin up fear and generate clicks. ICUs are extremely expensive and they're designed to run at a pretty high capacity under normal circumstances. A lot of news outlets will say things like, "HOSPITAL ICUs ARE NOW RUNNING AT 75-80% CAPACITY DUE TO A SURGE IN COVID" and position that as some huge increase, while in reality, those ICUs typically run at an average occupancy of 70%. We're fine. It's mostly fear mongering.
No…do you? There’s a big difference between a hospital being short staffed and them not having enough space for additional diners. Lots of restaurants in my area are short staffed because they can’t get people to work right now, not because they don’t have enough space. Some of these hospitals are Ina similar situation. But they’re not the same problem. You’re arguing a different point. I’m talking about the way the media misrepresents the situation to make it seem like hospitals are operating near capacity. That’s not actually the case.
It doesn’t help that they fired all the unvaxxed workers. That reduced capacity significantly.
My dad’s hospital fired 5 people for not getting vaccinated and only two of those were medical professionals.
https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-daily/id1200361736?i=1000547540277
Some helpful info further down in the article. Share of breakthrough infections of fully vaccinated is rising, and many cases where patients are admitted for some other reason but also test positive for covid then have to go through the protocols which drains the system. https://amp.cnn.com/cnn/2022/01/11/health/us-coronavirus-tuesday/index.html
Chief
Big surge. Mild symptoms for vaccinated - still issues with unvaccinated. Infractions are up 5x but hospitalization only cut in half - hence issue
Chief
Now do people who have been previously infected. Omicron is infecting them at a higher rate but the severity is also much much lower. We need to focus in on those who are both immunonaive and unvaccinated.
I know someone who called four different urgent care centers and they refused to see him because he had a simple fever and they didn’t have a Covid area in their office. Ended up having a sinus infection. I imagine this type of situation is forcing a lot more people into the hospitals. Also, it’s not uncommon for hospitals to be completely overwhelmed in the winter during bad flu seasons. It was just never covered or discussed until now.