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> The Army Corps is expected to immediately begin work to construct the [four] temporary hospitals. The Governor is also requesting FEMA designate four field ho

by soared 7y ago

> The Army Corps is expected to immediately begin work to construct the [four] temporary hospitals. The Governor is also requesting FEMA designate four field hospitals NY is creating EIGHT temporary hospitals total. I can't imagine the logistics, staffing, materials, etc. A few days ago I wasn't terribly concerned, but it continues to look worse and worse for the US.

rb808 7y ago
from the article: > The Governor is also requesting FEMA designate four field hospitals with 250 beds each for the state, intended for use in the Javits Center in addition to the temporary hospital to be constructed by the Army Corps. I think putting 1000 beds in a conference centre sounds a lot less dramatic than 4 new hospitals.
- alkonaut 7y ago
  I wonder why Wuhan authorities opted for new construction over using available spaces that surely must exist in a 10M city when everything is shut down?
  - posix_me_less 7y ago
    Available spaces were most probably not fit to serve as hospital for airborne infectious disease. Water/air ducts, isolation rooms, medical equipment and so on.
  - nashashmi 7y ago
    Wuhan wanted to put the hospital away from city center. And did not want to contaminate existing spaces. In NYC, there is very little space for something new. And the existing structures are poor locations for actual hospitals. If the economy is going to be down for a while, might as well use a public space that is shut down for that purpose.
  - subroutine 7y ago
    Perhaps it was to enlist the unemployed. Lots of people losing jobs because of the epidemic + need for hospitals to mitigate epidemic effects = build hospitals?
    - frandroid 7y ago
      That was least of China's worries. They clearly focused on pandemic resolution at the expense of everything else.
  - nitrobeast 7y ago
    There were convention centers converted to isolate patients in Wuhan too. Basically, Wuhan needed both more hospital beds for people requiring intensive care, and more beds for isolating infected patients with mild symptoms. Only the second kind can be in placed in conventional centers.
  - makomk 7y ago
    PR reasons, probably. It gave a big, visible, livestreamed 24/7 impression of progress towards doing something against the disease in a way that other countries wouldn't be able to match.
  - blackrock 7y ago
    It seems you’re not familiar with the situation. Those new temporary hospital units that they built in 2 weeks, are specialized, negative pressure rooms, that sucks the air out of the room, and runs it through a scrubbing filter, before safely expelling it outside into the atmosphere. They learned their lesson from SARS, and built these special care units, to treat pulmonary infectious diseases. These negative pressure rooms will help minimize infected air, such as when you do an intubation, and the virus get aerosolized, then it helps to vacuum the virus out of the air inside the room. These hospitals were built to treat their most critical cases. Then, they later built general facilities in sporting stadiums, for milder cases, to keep these infected patients away from their families and the public, while they recovered. In retrospect, they should have built these two types of facilities in parallel. This appears to be a lesson learned for them. They underestimated the magnitude of the infection rate, and later realized that milder cases can be triaged and treated separately. Granted, not a whole lot of information about this was shared in Western media; since most of the effort, was spent smearing China, and their terrible authoritarian government. And whatever was reported was dumbed down for western audiences. This was frustrating when you wanted to find actual information, and you had to dig deeper, to find actual useful information about what was happening on the ground. Note: As typical of HN readers, I’m expecting to get docked -4 points for this post, because I actually wrote something positive about China’s efforts to contain the coronavirus. In the end, apparently, it worked.
- _asummers 7y ago
  Why are they not using college dorms instead? There's already beds there and there's a modicum of isolation.
  - soared 7y ago
    I have no actual idea, but would venture to guess that all dorms in NY are old buildings with HVAC/Electrical/Elevators/Hallway sizes that aren't good enough for medical care.
    - cm2187 7y ago
      Lived in the international house in NY many years back. I would add bedbugs to the list!
  - wan23 7y ago
    Here in New York, they're building a facility at one university, though the dorms are going to be used to house workers rather than patients. https://riverheadlocal.com/2020/03/22/as-suffolk-coronavirus-cases-spike-to-over-1000-new-york-approves-building-temporary-hospitals-at-stony-brook-university-suny-westbury/ https://riverheadlocal.com/2020/03/22/as-suffolk-coronavirus...
MisterTea 7y ago
I saw an image of the rate of total diagnosed cases per day of Italy vs the USA and the curves appear to overlap suggesting were going to see a similar swell and they're preparing for it. I've not confirmed any of this but everything else I've read seems to suggest that this may be the case. I live in NYC with elderly family members as well as at-risk family members. I also have family in CA. My Friends are also in the same boat. Unfortunately my business is critical so it will remain open though they are taking this very seriously. They have a rigorous cleaning policy as well as split shifting a crazy schedule to minimize people in the building at once yet moving production along. All office people who can work remote (not me, im tech) are home with laptops. Thankfully I have my own microwave and fridge in my pretty isolated office so im hunkering down there by myself. Only bringing food prepared at home which I have a little stock of. They also said I am free to hide all I want unless it's an emergency which is usually once a week when some old machine decides to throw a hissy fit.
- jacquesm 7y ago
  NYC is the epicenter of the epidemic in the United States right now, they essentially doubled overnight in the number of confirmed cases. Pretty grim given the absolute numbers involved.
baybal2 7y ago
> NY is creating EIGHT temporary hospitals total. I can't imagine the logistics, staffing, materials, etc. A few days ago I wasn't terribly concerned, but it continues to look worse and worse for the US. I think the logistic complexity of building 4 field hospitals is like nothing compared building 30-40+ FOBs, MOBs, firebases, landing grounds, airfield, and other field logistic elements in the warzone, during an invasion. Saying that, one need to think how shockingly bad the showing of American state apparatus been in recent years despite such an enormous resource at its disposal, unless the actual army is involved.
- malandrew 7y ago
  The military is the only governmental organization that genuinely practices and puts into play its planning and training. The rest of government generally only plans but never stress tests those plans. And the few times they do get practice, we rotate them out of those roles every time a new administration is voted in. Any SRE working at large tech companies like Facebook and Google probably have more experience responding to crises and correcting the shortcomings than many of the people on the civilian side of government.
Balgair 7y ago
The acoup blog just did a piece on chemical weapons and their dis/use in modern times. Part of that analysis was a dive into Modern v. Static armies. Static armies are what Saddam, Assad, and the Iranians have. Though their weapons are pretty up to date, they still get squished when fighting Modern armies like the US or France. That is because their 'doctrine' is Static, mostly to be coup-proof. In Static Armies, you don't give field commanders a lot of lee-way or control. You send orders, they execute. They don't get to play jazz. This is due to regime issues that don't translate into up to date warfare. In Modern armies, you have terribly expensive weapons too. But the training is what makes it really work. You have to train field commanders to play jazz and improvise. It's a constant blitzkrieg of movement and mechanized/digitized warfare. There is no sitting around. That takes training people to think for themselves; a big no-no in regimes. The US is the example of a modern force, complete with fancy gadgets and fancy training. We should expect that NYNG could get eight field hospitals going in hours. That is the entire basis of our military, to move really fast and get things done. Imperfectly? Oh hell yes. But fast is the entire name of the game. https://acoup.blog/2020/03/20/collections-why-dont-we-use-chemical-weapons-anymore/ https://acoup.blog/2020/03/20/collections-why-dont-we-use-ch...
- burneraccount12 7y ago
  I promise you, there is very little improvisation or "jazz" in the U.S. Army and a lot of micromangement and bureaucracy. The experience is more akin to being in a massive company with tons of middle managers who are always looking to self-promote and cover their a. The army has many great men and women in it, despite the bs, but let's not pretend it's some "dynamic" entity. Don't believe me? Read Bob Gates' memoir, where he recounts how as SecDef he had to fight the Pentagon brass just to get MRAPs that would save lives. And he was in charge of the department!
  - nexuist 7y ago
    Isn't this exactly the point of OP? >In Static Armies, you don't give field commanders a lot of lee-way or control. You send orders, they execute. If we had a Static Army, the Pentagon brass would have immediately yielded to SecDef and executed his orders. The fact that there had to be immense debate around the issue means that everyone is granted the right to do their thing and improvise in the meantime. You can bet troops were trying all sorts of wacky things to IED-proof their Humvees.
jacques_chester 7y ago
Being prepared to defend against and then defeat an intelligent, organised enemy with a strong industrial base requires the maintenance of an incredibly expensive logistical apparatus with massive stockpiles of reserve materiel and operating capacity. This is one of the few respects in which military wastefulness is useful, since those capabilities are repurposable for zero-sum games played against nature.
op03 7y ago
More like for NYC. NY is reporting more than half the cases in the US.

by soared 7y ago

rb808 7y ago

from the article: > The Governor is also requesting FEMA designate four field hospitals with 250 beds each for the state, intended for use in the Javits Center in addition to the temporary hospital to be constructed by the Army Corps. I think putting 1000 beds in a conference centre sounds a lot less dramatic than 4 new hospitals.

alkonaut 7y ago
I wonder why Wuhan authorities opted for new construction over using available spaces that surely must exist in a 10M city when everything is shut down?
- posix_me_less 7y ago
  Available spaces were most probably not fit to serve as hospital for airborne infectious disease. Water/air ducts, isolation rooms, medical equipment and so on.
- nashashmi 7y ago
  Wuhan wanted to put the hospital away from city center. And did not want to contaminate existing spaces. In NYC, there is very little space for something new. And the existing structures are poor locations for actual hospitals. If the economy is going to be down for a while, might as well use a public space that is shut down for that purpose.
- subroutine 7y ago
  Perhaps it was to enlist the unemployed. Lots of people losing jobs because of the epidemic + need for hospitals to mitigate epidemic effects = build hospitals?
  - frandroid 7y ago
    That was least of China's worries. They clearly focused on pandemic resolution at the expense of everything else.
- nitrobeast 7y ago
  There were convention centers converted to isolate patients in Wuhan too. Basically, Wuhan needed both more hospital beds for people requiring intensive care, and more beds for isolating infected patients with mild symptoms. Only the second kind can be in placed in conventional centers.
- makomk 7y ago
  PR reasons, probably. It gave a big, visible, livestreamed 24/7 impression of progress towards doing something against the disease in a way that other countries wouldn't be able to match.
- blackrock 7y ago
  It seems you’re not familiar with the situation. Those new temporary hospital units that they built in 2 weeks, are specialized, negative pressure rooms, that sucks the air out of the room, and runs it through a scrubbing filter, before safely expelling it outside into the atmosphere. They learned their lesson from SARS, and built these special care units, to treat pulmonary infectious diseases. These negative pressure rooms will help minimize infected air, such as when you do an intubation, and the virus get aerosolized, then it helps to vacuum the virus out of the air inside the room. These hospitals were built to treat their most critical cases. Then, they later built general facilities in sporting stadiums, for milder cases, to keep these infected patients away from their families and the public, while they recovered. In retrospect, they should have built these two types of facilities in parallel. This appears to be a lesson learned for them. They underestimated the magnitude of the infection rate, and later realized that milder cases can be triaged and treated separately. Granted, not a whole lot of information about this was shared in Western media; since most of the effort, was spent smearing China, and their terrible authoritarian government. And whatever was reported was dumbed down for western audiences. This was frustrating when you wanted to find actual information, and you had to dig deeper, to find actual useful information about what was happening on the ground. Note: As typical of HN readers, I’m expecting to get docked -4 points for this post, because I actually wrote something positive about China’s efforts to contain the coronavirus. In the end, apparently, it worked.
_asummers 7y ago
Why are they not using college dorms instead? There's already beds there and there's a modicum of isolation.
- soared 7y ago
  I have no actual idea, but would venture to guess that all dorms in NY are old buildings with HVAC/Electrical/Elevators/Hallway sizes that aren't good enough for medical care.
  - cm2187 7y ago
    Lived in the international house in NY many years back. I would add bedbugs to the list!
- wan23 7y ago
  Here in New York, they're building a facility at one university, though the dorms are going to be used to house workers rather than patients. https://riverheadlocal.com/2020/03/22/as-suffolk-coronavirus-cases-spike-to-over-1000-new-york-approves-building-temporary-hospitals-at-stony-brook-university-suny-westbury/ https://riverheadlocal.com/2020/03/22/as-suffolk-coronavirus...

MisterTea 7y ago

I saw an image of the rate of total diagnosed cases per day of Italy vs the USA and the curves appear to overlap suggesting were going to see a similar swell and they're preparing for it. I've not confirmed any of this but everything else I've read seems to suggest that this may be the case. I live in NYC with elderly family members as well as at-risk family members. I also have family in CA. My Friends are also in the same boat. Unfortunately my business is critical so it will remain open though they are taking this very seriously. They have a rigorous cleaning policy as well as split shifting a crazy schedule to minimize people in the building at once yet moving production along. All office people who can work remote (not me, im tech) are home with laptops. Thankfully I have my own microwave and fridge in my pretty isolated office so im hunkering down there by myself. Only bringing food prepared at home which I have a little stock of. They also said I am free to hide all I want unless it's an emergency which is usually once a week when some old machine decides to throw a hissy fit.

jacquesm 7y ago
NYC is the epicenter of the epidemic in the United States right now, they essentially doubled overnight in the number of confirmed cases. Pretty grim given the absolute numbers involved.

baybal2 7y ago

> NY is creating EIGHT temporary hospitals total. I can't imagine the logistics, staffing, materials, etc. A few days ago I wasn't terribly concerned, but it continues to look worse and worse for the US. I think the logistic complexity of building 4 field hospitals is like nothing compared building 30-40+ FOBs, MOBs, firebases, landing grounds, airfield, and other field logistic elements in the warzone, during an invasion. Saying that, one need to think how shockingly bad the showing of American state apparatus been in recent years despite such an enormous resource at its disposal, unless the actual army is involved.

malandrew 7y ago
The military is the only governmental organization that genuinely practices and puts into play its planning and training. The rest of government generally only plans but never stress tests those plans. And the few times they do get practice, we rotate them out of those roles every time a new administration is voted in. Any SRE working at large tech companies like Facebook and Google probably have more experience responding to crises and correcting the shortcomings than many of the people on the civilian side of government.

Balgair 7y ago

The acoup blog just did a piece on chemical weapons and their dis/use in modern times. Part of that analysis was a dive into Modern v. Static armies. Static armies are what Saddam, Assad, and the Iranians have. Though their weapons are pretty up to date, they still get squished when fighting Modern armies like the US or France. That is because their 'doctrine' is Static, mostly to be coup-proof. In Static Armies, you don't give field commanders a lot of lee-way or control. You send orders, they execute. They don't get to play jazz. This is due to regime issues that don't translate into up to date warfare. In Modern armies, you have terribly expensive weapons too. But the training is what makes it really work. You have to train field commanders to play jazz and improvise. It's a constant blitzkrieg of movement and mechanized/digitized warfare. There is no sitting around. That takes training people to think for themselves; a big no-no in regimes. The US is the example of a modern force, complete with fancy gadgets and fancy training. We should expect that NYNG could get eight field hospitals going in hours. That is the entire basis of our military, to move really fast and get things done. Imperfectly? Oh hell yes. But fast is the entire name of the game. https://acoup.blog/2020/03/20/collections-why-dont-we-use-chemical-weapons-anymore/ https://acoup.blog/2020/03/20/collections-why-dont-we-use-ch...

burneraccount12 7y ago
I promise you, there is very little improvisation or "jazz" in the U.S. Army and a lot of micromangement and bureaucracy. The experience is more akin to being in a massive company with tons of middle managers who are always looking to self-promote and cover their a. The army has many great men and women in it, despite the bs, but let's not pretend it's some "dynamic" entity. Don't believe me? Read Bob Gates' memoir, where he recounts how as SecDef he had to fight the Pentagon brass just to get MRAPs that would save lives. And he was in charge of the department!
- nexuist 7y ago
  Isn't this exactly the point of OP? >In Static Armies, you don't give field commanders a lot of lee-way or control. You send orders, they execute. If we had a Static Army, the Pentagon brass would have immediately yielded to SecDef and executed his orders. The fact that there had to be immense debate around the issue means that everyone is granted the right to do their thing and improvise in the meantime. You can bet troops were trying all sorts of wacky things to IED-proof their Humvees.

jacques_chester 7y ago

Being prepared to defend against and then defeat an intelligent, organised enemy with a strong industrial base requires the maintenance of an incredibly expensive logistical apparatus with massive stockpiles of reserve materiel and operating capacity. This is one of the few respects in which military wastefulness is useful, since those capabilities are repurposable for zero-sum games played against nature.

op03 7y ago

More like for NYC. NY is reporting more than half the cases in the US.