6 ms·

US Betrays Healthcare Workers in Coronavirus Disaster

50 points by Reedx 7y ago

harry8 7y ago
Will his hospital get the equipment as it becomes available, one day, or is this criticism going to obstruct that? What is the crime being committed? If none, what should it be according to new law given the body count that's really only just started.
threatofrain 7y ago
> Dr. Kooi Seng Chng: 8 months ago, the US was rated the most ready to face an pandemic. China was rated 51. Look at what has happened over the past 3 months. US has become the new epicentre for covid19. How did that happen. It has all to do with mindset. Shockingly Americans don't believe in wearing masks..."
- harry8 7y ago
  To be fair to the us, the who is telling them not to wear masks. They should knowno better, sure. It's not like they slavishly follow the who.
  - notauser 7y ago
    The U.S. did not use COVID-19 diagnostic tests produced by the WHO in favor of producing its own. So it could have deviated on mask guidance, too.
    - harry8 7y ago
      yeah "It's not like they slavishly follow the who" is what I said too. Probably should not have deviated there too, should have done it for masks. 0 for 2. How many lives will that cost?
  - blub 7y ago
    Since when does the US give a crap about what some international organization has to say? Couldn't have started at a worse time to do that.
- jdminhbg 7y ago
  Pretty much the only sentence in this that isn't a lie is about Americans not believing in wearing masks. And even then, that's at least partly because the Chinese-controlled WHO told them not to.
- unclebucknasty 7y ago
  This is melodramatic America-bashing. The U.S. is nowhere near a third world country. This issue was due to the ineptness and hubris of the current administration, which defunded relevant initiatives, ignored the warnings, and refused to learn lessons from other nations' experience with the virus. Our medical system is fully capable of managing this with the proper preparation and supportive social policy. In fact, there is not a medical system in the world that could manage a pandemic of this scale without those things.
  - bleah1000 7y ago
    I'm tired of seeing this bashing of the administration. Do I think they did a great job, heck no. But I think they are doing a relatively good job. It seems to be this prayer people keep repeating, the administration screwed this all up. People seem to want this to be true, want it to be all the current admin's fault. I mean there are only really two countries that did everything they could early, Taiwan and South Korea. And it's not clear that the US could have followed everything they did. I think some of the tracking Taiwan did would have definitely been privacy violations and completely illegal here. I mean, what evidence is there that having a dedicated pandemic team would have helped? This is the same government you just said was incompetent, so why would this have helped? The botched initial testing came from the CDC and FDA, so how did the admin make that happen? And the CDC would have been the same group that had a dedicated pandemic team. You might be able to point at some Trump appointee and say that person was directly responsible for the testing disaster, but I think that's unlikely. What if it turns out an Obama appointee caused the problem? I certainly wouldn't blame Obama for that. Also, the federal government is not supposed to be this dictator that controls everything in the US. Each state, each county is better equipped to figure out how to handle the crisis. The feds should be helping with logistics and guidelines, but what else? A nationwide lock down might not be good for the entire country. For example, a very rural state, might not really need a lock down. Or it might need a more measured lock down of a few very urban city centers. And would it even be legal for the federal government to order a lock down? As for leadership at the federal level, the coronavirus task force was created at the end of January. Should it have been created earlier? Maybe if the WHO and the CCP weren't lying their asses off about the disease it would have been. The only thing that allowed Taiwan to handle this better was that they knew the CCP would be lying, so when they heard about a new disease in December, they immediately went into disease protocol mode. Look, do I think the current US admin is handling this perfectly, no. But they are not doing this horrible job that many people seem to want them to be doing. Maybe if all you ever see is the negative articles you would believe that, but I would urge you to dig deeper. You don't even need to go to some fringe websites to see people saying the admin is doing a good job. And I don't mean looking at Fox News, I mean people on MSNBC and other left leaning networks are not all completely negative.
- ur-whale 7y ago
  > 8 months ago, the US was rated the most ready to face an pandemic. The US has a truly terrible tendency to start speeches about itself with "The US is the greatest country on earth when it comes to X ..." whatever X may be. To the point that I suspect even the people uttering it truly believe what they're peddling. If there's a country that has understood at a gut level that good marketing trumps honesty every time, it's the US. Unfortunately, good marketing and truth are very rarely compatible [1]. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bhYIng0tHxA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bhYIng0tHxA
Melting_Harps 7y ago
Sidenote: The opening paragraph is why, especially having done my undergrad with mainly Pre-Med students, I will never understand why most would willingly go into Medicine. It has to be a calling given all the misery and sorrow you're exposed to on a daily basis; because in my experience most Physicians are often very reluctant to encourage their children to go into that field. I'm just thankful they exist at this point, given how this has all unfolded.
- threatofrain 7y ago
  It's one of the best class mobility pathways.
  - Melting_Harps 7y ago
    > It's one of the best class mobility pathways. Is it in the US? Spending 10+ years in school, all while drowning in 200k+ debt before you enter your practice is hardly what I'd call assured upward mobility. And then you still have to work those crazy 60+ hour weeks in the hopes that after your debt is paid off you can start to live as an established MD well into your middle age. Honestly, with all of that in mind being a dentist makes sense, being a physician does not. But then neither is being a founder at a startup, and we're all drawn to that for various reasons, too.
    - ComputerGuru 7y ago
      Doctors don’t have a hard time paying off those loans. It’s the liberal arts students (for one) with loans ten times smaller but incomes a hundred times less that can’t.
watertom 7y ago
Why should healthcare workers be treated differently than any other employee/cog? The GOP want to run everything as a business, this went down exactly like a business does things. Public safety is not the problem of The healthcare industry.
swampthing 7y ago
Not only are doctors and nurses getting muzzled and fired for commenting on inadequate supplies, but many hospitals and clinics are refusing to allow their doctors and nurses to bring their own masks. Doctors and nurses are fighting hospital administration on this. I understand why you wouldn’t want that happening in normal times, but to hold firm on that policy now seems like utter madness.
- chance_state 7y ago
  Source on doctors and nurses being fired? I haven't heard any reports of that.
  - swampthing 7y ago
    It's mentioned in the article: > On a widespread basis, doctors and nurses are being gagged and muzzled by administrators for expressing their concerns, and penalized or even fired when they do speak out. That text links to: https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/health/er-doctor-who-criticized-bellingham-hospitals-coronavirus-protections-has-been-fired/ https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/health/er-doctor-w...
- ur-whale 7y ago
  > I understand why you wouldn’t want that happening in normal times Why?
  - swampthing 7y ago
    You can imagine a doctor or nurse bringing in sub-standard equipment that then causes an issue for a patient.
    - xbmcuser 7y ago
      Yes but they are not being provided with adequate equipment the choices for doctors and nurses is quit treating patients or take a chance get infected and die or bring their own equipment to protect themselves.
salawat 7y ago
I actually have a proposal to help with the issue of doctors getting taken out of action by infection. We need to train corpsman. Now. Specifically in the essential skills is to handle the average duties involved with COVID-19 hospitalization and care. Make sure they have enough skill to generally handle things, and if possible, prefer training/drafting in those who have already developed immunity. I understand it isn't a trivial feat by a long shot; but right now medical expertise is to specialized in the sense that "general care" is beyond the reach of even a modestly trained individual; making the loss of one fully trained and licensed medical practitioner being lost devastating. I'd propose the following: A) Expedited training programs for conducting hospital intake, data entry, basic vitals taking, basic equipment checking/operations, and familiarity with COVID specific complications, and an escalation process. B) Medical apprenticeship programs minus the 8 years of pre-schooling. We can get back to that once things have settled down enough. Hours spent count toward eventual medical training/licensure...somehow... C) Same apprenticeship system should exist for ventilator operators D) Expedited training in I industrial manufacturing aimed toward a medical device manufacturing specialization. E) Insurance companies get to pound sand. Someone has to pay for it all sadly, if we're staying true to form; not necessarily saying we should. F) Doctors/nurses/LPN's get assigned a squad of these gophers to manage patients, only popping in to handle abnormalities/specific complications. G) Practicing doctor's are highly encouraged to train and guide anyone willing to at least provide some help. Short of something like that, and I think we may start to see a pinch where as things peak, medical professionals start dropping like flies or burning through donated antibody laden serum transplants to cope with the absurd viral loads they're being forced to endure by necessity. If we can figure out a way to dilute that by spreading out repeated exposure between different people (again, preferably those who have recovered), I think the system will stand a much better chance of coping. Furthermore, it decentralizes the very basics of medical care, builds/reinforces community bonds, gives everyone a potential way to help out once they've recovered, and will likely increase the quality of medical care for everyone by decreasing the severity of overwork our artificially constrained supply of fully trained medical personnel causes. Short of doing something like that, I don't see any way to avoid losing a hell of a lot of skilled, hard-working, and invaluable people during this time of crisis. Hell, if I knew I'd already had the stuff and developed immunity, I'd volunteer. Throw in some modest compensation, and I bet you'd get even more. Or better yet, enstate a program of cost of care deferral by putting in hours after recovery. It's not the most easy thing to get off the ground, but it's better than nothing.
caconym_ 7y ago
My wife is a nurse in a hospital in one of the COVID epicenters, though she does not work with patients that have tested positive, and she is not getting adequate protection. The PPE policies she's subject to have already resulted in some of her colleagues being infected, but nothing has changed. She is not allowed to wear a mask for most of her patient interactions. I don't know what to do.
- tomp 7y ago
  What’s the worst that can happen? She gets fired? Doesn’t the hospital need her more than she needs the hospital right now?
titzer 7y ago
Regardless of your political stripes, this is a failure of preparedness and leadership at so many levels. America deserves better. But deserve has got nothing to do with it. We have to work towards being better at this. No amount of throwing money or thoughts and prayers will fix it. Voting, maybe. But holding leadership to account is part of the function of democracy. The failures here are disgraceful. When the dust settles, let's please remove the leaders who suck at this.
- 93po 7y ago
  Americans are getting what they voted for. Politicians that run on identity politics and obscure meaningful issues with whatever popular social issue people stick to as single issue voters. American voting patterns are not going to change until the current younger generation becomes the majority.

50 points by Reedx 7y ago

Will his hospital get the equipment as it becomes available, one day, or is this criticism going to obstruct that? What is the crime being committed? If none, what should it be according to new law given the body count that's really only just started.

threatofrain 7y ago

> Dr. Kooi Seng Chng: 8 months ago, the US was rated the most ready to face an pandemic. China was rated 51. Look at what has happened over the past 3 months. US has become the new epicentre for covid19. How did that happen. It has all to do with mindset. Shockingly Americans don't believe in wearing masks..."

harry8 7y ago
To be fair to the us, the who is telling them not to wear masks. They should knowno better, sure. It's not like they slavishly follow the who.
- notauser 7y ago
  The U.S. did not use COVID-19 diagnostic tests produced by the WHO in favor of producing its own. So it could have deviated on mask guidance, too.
  - harry8 7y ago
    yeah "It's not like they slavishly follow the who" is what I said too. Probably should not have deviated there too, should have done it for masks. 0 for 2. How many lives will that cost?
- blub 7y ago
  Since when does the US give a crap about what some international organization has to say? Couldn't have started at a worse time to do that.
jdminhbg 7y ago
Pretty much the only sentence in this that isn't a lie is about Americans not believing in wearing masks. And even then, that's at least partly because the Chinese-controlled WHO told them not to.
unclebucknasty 7y ago
This is melodramatic America-bashing. The U.S. is nowhere near a third world country. This issue was due to the ineptness and hubris of the current administration, which defunded relevant initiatives, ignored the warnings, and refused to learn lessons from other nations' experience with the virus. Our medical system is fully capable of managing this with the proper preparation and supportive social policy. In fact, there is not a medical system in the world that could manage a pandemic of this scale without those things.
- bleah1000 7y ago
  I'm tired of seeing this bashing of the administration. Do I think they did a great job, heck no. But I think they are doing a relatively good job. It seems to be this prayer people keep repeating, the administration screwed this all up. People seem to want this to be true, want it to be all the current admin's fault. I mean there are only really two countries that did everything they could early, Taiwan and South Korea. And it's not clear that the US could have followed everything they did. I think some of the tracking Taiwan did would have definitely been privacy violations and completely illegal here. I mean, what evidence is there that having a dedicated pandemic team would have helped? This is the same government you just said was incompetent, so why would this have helped? The botched initial testing came from the CDC and FDA, so how did the admin make that happen? And the CDC would have been the same group that had a dedicated pandemic team. You might be able to point at some Trump appointee and say that person was directly responsible for the testing disaster, but I think that's unlikely. What if it turns out an Obama appointee caused the problem? I certainly wouldn't blame Obama for that. Also, the federal government is not supposed to be this dictator that controls everything in the US. Each state, each county is better equipped to figure out how to handle the crisis. The feds should be helping with logistics and guidelines, but what else? A nationwide lock down might not be good for the entire country. For example, a very rural state, might not really need a lock down. Or it might need a more measured lock down of a few very urban city centers. And would it even be legal for the federal government to order a lock down? As for leadership at the federal level, the coronavirus task force was created at the end of January. Should it have been created earlier? Maybe if the WHO and the CCP weren't lying their asses off about the disease it would have been. The only thing that allowed Taiwan to handle this better was that they knew the CCP would be lying, so when they heard about a new disease in December, they immediately went into disease protocol mode. Look, do I think the current US admin is handling this perfectly, no. But they are not doing this horrible job that many people seem to want them to be doing. Maybe if all you ever see is the negative articles you would believe that, but I would urge you to dig deeper. You don't even need to go to some fringe websites to see people saying the admin is doing a good job. And I don't mean looking at Fox News, I mean people on MSNBC and other left leaning networks are not all completely negative.
ur-whale 7y ago
> 8 months ago, the US was rated the most ready to face an pandemic. The US has a truly terrible tendency to start speeches about itself with "The US is the greatest country on earth when it comes to X ..." whatever X may be. To the point that I suspect even the people uttering it truly believe what they're peddling. If there's a country that has understood at a gut level that good marketing trumps honesty every time, it's the US. Unfortunately, good marketing and truth are very rarely compatible [1]. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bhYIng0tHxA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bhYIng0tHxA

Melting_Harps 7y ago

Sidenote: The opening paragraph is why, especially having done my undergrad with mainly Pre-Med students, I will never understand why most would willingly go into Medicine. It has to be a calling given all the misery and sorrow you're exposed to on a daily basis; because in my experience most Physicians are often very reluctant to encourage their children to go into that field. I'm just thankful they exist at this point, given how this has all unfolded.

threatofrain 7y ago
It's one of the best class mobility pathways.
- Melting_Harps 7y ago
  > It's one of the best class mobility pathways. Is it in the US? Spending 10+ years in school, all while drowning in 200k+ debt before you enter your practice is hardly what I'd call assured upward mobility. And then you still have to work those crazy 60+ hour weeks in the hopes that after your debt is paid off you can start to live as an established MD well into your middle age. Honestly, with all of that in mind being a dentist makes sense, being a physician does not. But then neither is being a founder at a startup, and we're all drawn to that for various reasons, too.
  - ComputerGuru 7y ago
    Doctors don’t have a hard time paying off those loans. It’s the liberal arts students (for one) with loans ten times smaller but incomes a hundred times less that can’t.

watertom 7y ago

Why should healthcare workers be treated differently than any other employee/cog? The GOP want to run everything as a business, this went down exactly like a business does things. Public safety is not the problem of The healthcare industry.

swampthing 7y ago

Not only are doctors and nurses getting muzzled and fired for commenting on inadequate supplies, but many hospitals and clinics are refusing to allow their doctors and nurses to bring their own masks. Doctors and nurses are fighting hospital administration on this. I understand why you wouldn’t want that happening in normal times, but to hold firm on that policy now seems like utter madness.

chance_state 7y ago
Source on doctors and nurses being fired? I haven't heard any reports of that.
- swampthing 7y ago
  It's mentioned in the article: > On a widespread basis, doctors and nurses are being gagged and muzzled by administrators for expressing their concerns, and penalized or even fired when they do speak out. That text links to: https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/health/er-doctor-who-criticized-bellingham-hospitals-coronavirus-protections-has-been-fired/ https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/health/er-doctor-w...
ur-whale 7y ago
> I understand why you wouldn’t want that happening in normal times Why?
- swampthing 7y ago
  You can imagine a doctor or nurse bringing in sub-standard equipment that then causes an issue for a patient.
  - xbmcuser 7y ago
    Yes but they are not being provided with adequate equipment the choices for doctors and nurses is quit treating patients or take a chance get infected and die or bring their own equipment to protect themselves.

salawat 7y ago

I actually have a proposal to help with the issue of doctors getting taken out of action by infection. We need to train corpsman. Now. Specifically in the essential skills is to handle the average duties involved with COVID-19 hospitalization and care. Make sure they have enough skill to generally handle things, and if possible, prefer training/drafting in those who have already developed immunity. I understand it isn't a trivial feat by a long shot; but right now medical expertise is to specialized in the sense that "general care" is beyond the reach of even a modestly trained individual; making the loss of one fully trained and licensed medical practitioner being lost devastating. I'd propose the following: A) Expedited training programs for conducting hospital intake, data entry, basic vitals taking, basic equipment checking/operations, and familiarity with COVID specific complications, and an escalation process. B) Medical apprenticeship programs minus the 8 years of pre-schooling. We can get back to that once things have settled down enough. Hours spent count toward eventual medical training/licensure...somehow... C) Same apprenticeship system should exist for ventilator operators D) Expedited training in I industrial manufacturing aimed toward a medical device manufacturing specialization. E) Insurance companies get to pound sand. Someone has to pay for it all sadly, if we're staying true to form; not necessarily saying we should. F) Doctors/nurses/LPN's get assigned a squad of these gophers to manage patients, only popping in to handle abnormalities/specific complications. G) Practicing doctor's are highly encouraged to train and guide anyone willing to at least provide some help. Short of something like that, and I think we may start to see a pinch where as things peak, medical professionals start dropping like flies or burning through donated antibody laden serum transplants to cope with the absurd viral loads they're being forced to endure by necessity. If we can figure out a way to dilute that by spreading out repeated exposure between different people (again, preferably those who have recovered), I think the system will stand a much better chance of coping. Furthermore, it decentralizes the very basics of medical care, builds/reinforces community bonds, gives everyone a potential way to help out once they've recovered, and will likely increase the quality of medical care for everyone by decreasing the severity of overwork our artificially constrained supply of fully trained medical personnel causes. Short of doing something like that, I don't see any way to avoid losing a hell of a lot of skilled, hard-working, and invaluable people during this time of crisis. Hell, if I knew I'd already had the stuff and developed immunity, I'd volunteer. Throw in some modest compensation, and I bet you'd get even more. Or better yet, enstate a program of cost of care deferral by putting in hours after recovery. It's not the most easy thing to get off the ground, but it's better than nothing.

caconym_ 7y ago

My wife is a nurse in a hospital in one of the COVID epicenters, though she does not work with patients that have tested positive, and she is not getting adequate protection. The PPE policies she's subject to have already resulted in some of her colleagues being infected, but nothing has changed. She is not allowed to wear a mask for most of her patient interactions. I don't know what to do.

tomp 7y ago
What’s the worst that can happen? She gets fired? Doesn’t the hospital need her more than she needs the hospital right now?

titzer 7y ago

Regardless of your political stripes, this is a failure of preparedness and leadership at so many levels. America deserves better. But deserve has got nothing to do with it. We have to work towards being better at this. No amount of throwing money or thoughts and prayers will fix it. Voting, maybe. But holding leadership to account is part of the function of democracy. The failures here are disgraceful. When the dust settles, let's please remove the leaders who suck at this.

93po 7y ago
Americans are getting what they voted for. Politicians that run on identity politics and obscure meaningful issues with whatever popular social issue people stick to as single issue voters. American voting patterns are not going to change until the current younger generation becomes the majority.