'Like hell:' As Olympics loom, Japan health care in turmoil

[TexasTowelie]

TOKYO -- As she struggled to breathe, Shizue Akita had to wait more than six hours while paramedics searched for a hospital in Osaka that would treat her worsening COVID-19.

When she finally got to one that wasn’t overwhelmed with other patients, doctors diagnosed severe pneumonia and organ failure and sedated her. Akita, 87, was dead two weeks later.

“Osaka’s medical systems have collapsed,” said her son, Kazuyuki Akita. He has watched from his home north of Tokyo as three other family members in Osaka have dealt with the virus, and with inadequate health care. “It’s like hell.”

Hospitals in Osaka, Japan’s third-biggest city and only 2 1/2 hours by bullet train from Summer Olympics host Tokyo, are overflowing with coronavirus patients. About 35,000 people nationwide — twice the number of those in hospitals — must stay at home with the disease, often becoming seriously ill and sometimes dying before they can get medical care.

Read more: https://www.fresnobee.com/news/article251579273.html

[betsuni]

1. If you have an emergency after hospital closing hours, if the hospital beds are taken,

you're on your own. Quite usual if you have an emergency to wait in the ambulance for hours until they can find a hospital that will take you.

I assume a lot of people are dying at home.

[brush]

2. They might as well cancel the Olympics. It's not going make any money and many...

athletes are going to back out, just as the tourists who attend the Games will.

[JustABozoOnThisBus]

4. I wonder what percent of U.S. Olympic athletes are vaccinated? And their support staff?

And then, worldwide, how are Olympic athletes doing with vaccines? Michigan, for example, has enough unused and unwanted vaccines to immunize the entire world's Olympic athletes many times over. Can we share?

[brush]

6. That would be a good thing. The more people vaccinated the better. I feel bad...

for all the athletes as the Games have already been postponed from 2020 and for some of them this is their last chance at an Olympics after training so hard.

The pandemic has screwed up so many things.

[bahboo]

3. cancel them already...

jesus....

[Ace Rothstein]

5. The worst is that they have millions of vaccines sitting in storage.

Apparently Japan is a beaurocratic nightmare.