COVID-19 Will Become An Endemic Disease As Life Goes On, Is A Fairytale: US Hospitals, Docs Shortage
Last edited Wed Jul 28, 2021, 04:12 PM - Edit history (1)
Daily Kos, July 20, 2021. 'We have to eliminate COVID-19, not learn to live with it because we can't live with it.' - Selected Excerpts, Ed.
.. How disruptive the virus will ultimately be as Tokyo attempts to hustle through these already-delayed Olympic games remains unclear. All evidence shows that those who have been vaccinated are very unlikely to contract a serious illness. However, the inability to shut out the SARS-CoV-2 virus, even under the strict requirements that have been put in place in Tokyo shows the enormous difficulty of fighting a disease that has steadily become more transmissible in the last year. The latest widely circulated variants, such as delta, are thought to have a basic reproduction number (R0) of around 6—making them far more contagious & transmissible than either the flu or the original wave of COVID-19. Because of this very high R0 number, ending community spread of COVID-19 will require an extremely high rate of vaccine compliance coupled with additional efforts to prevent transmission, such as mask mandates & national systems of testing & contact tracing.
For a pandemic-weary nation (and world) this sounds like a lot of hassle. Because it is. A lot of people are ready to settle into the idea that COVID-19 will simply become an endemic disease, one that can be addressed with vaccine boosters and the expectation that the unvaccinated will continue to get ill. That can’t happen. Because accepting COVID-19 as something that’s “here to stay” is signing onto a death sentence that goes way beyond the unvaccinated.
> The U.S. has 2.5 hospital beds and 2.6 physicians per 1,000 residents. That number is far below many other wealthy nations - in Germany those numbers would be 6.0 and 4.3. Anyone who has tried to get a doctor’s appt. and found the next available slot months away understands how small the number of available physicians really is. News stories of patients being shipped hundreds of miles in search of an open bed show just how little leeway there is in hospital capacity.
> Not only does the U.S. have few hospital beds available, the system is not designed to run at 100% capacity for an extended period. Over the last 3 decades, hospitals have typically been about 66% full. They are designed to be 66% full. They are supplied as if they will be 66% full. They are staffed to operate 66% full. Over the last 18 months, hospitals across the nation have operated at extraordinary levels. The public praise for health care workers is absolutely deserved, because they have been operating at the ragged edge of exhaustion for a period much, much longer than this system was designed to accommodate. Not only are these workers facing extraordinary hours, they are themselves subject to exposure and illness, which has often required them to be isolated from family and friends. They've also faced record numbers of patients who they simply could not help and trauma.
As The Lancet noted back in February, COVID-19 has lead to an extremely high rate of burnout among health care workers around the globe. It’s also very worth noting that this is having a disproportionate impact on women, including women of color, who make up almost 70% of health care workers. Health care workers can’t go on in a system where hospitals are operating at near capacity, where ICUs are seeing record numbers of patients, and where death and long-term disability is a daily outcome. It’s not just a matter of the expense—though the expense is towering—the number of trained people to support a health care system for a perpetual pandemic is simply unavailable...
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https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2021/7/20/2040870/-We-have-to-eliminate-COVID-19-not-learn-to-live-with-it-because-we-can-t-live-with-it
- First Responders walk during the "Hometown Heroes" Ticker Tape Parade on July 07, 2021 in NY, New York. Healthcare Workers, 1st responders & essential workers are honored in Manhattan's Canyon of Heroes for their service during the Covid-19 pandemic. These people can't do this forever.
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