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> New York City was not overwhelmed in the first wave, and had both Javits and the Mercy as unused spare capacity. This is not in line with the facts as I unde

> New York City was not overwhelmed in the first wave, and had both Javits and the Mercy as unused spare capacity. This is not in line with the facts as I understand them. Multiple health care workers I know told me in March-April that their ability to treat Covid patients were capped by constrained resources (not enough ventilators, not enough staff, not enough beds) during the first wave. Here [1] is an article that supports these anecdotes. Also, the Navy hospital ships refused to accept patient transfers, even as the hospitals were completely full [2]. "On top of its strict rules preventing people infected with the virus from coming on board, the Navy is also refusing to treat a host of other conditions. " and "Mr. Dowling said he has had to tear his hospitals apart, retrofitting any unused space, including lobbies and conference rooms, into hospital wards.". So no, you are incorrect. NY hospitals were absolutely overrun during the first wave. Please do not perpetuate a narrative that isn't supported by facts. 1) https://www.cnn.com/2020/03/30/us/brooklyn-hospital-coronavirus-patients-deaths/index.html https://www.cnn.com/2020/03/30/us/brooklyn-hospital-coronavi... 2) https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/02/nyregion/ny-coronavirus-usns-comfort.html https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/02/nyregion/ny-coronavirus-u...

ethbr0 6y ago
I don't think [1] suppports that. That's a report from a single hospital. > [...] the ICU is at capacity, patient beds line the hallways of the emergency department, and the morgue is overflowing. [...] has a capacity of about 300 people at any given time They then talk about converting elective space and hallways into bed space. Which was pretty normal everywhere. And critically, NYC, as with all major metros, operates as a system of hospitals. So the data to support your assertion would be total NYC bed & ICU bed capacity & utilization. "Overwhelmed" means unable to provide care. Not busy. Not lacking in specific equipment. Not being diverted to another hospital. It means ambulances showing up with patients and being told "No, we can provide no treatment." The situation on the Comfort in NYC (swapped my coasts, oops!) was... complicated. The Navy was essentially commanded to "Send a big ship to NYC so it can be seen." Everyone I've talked to in Navy medicine thought it was idiotic, for reasons too numerous to list. However, given the order from on high, the least &@$_ed way of fulfilling it was to use the Comfort to offload non-Covid patients from local hospitals, thereby freeing capacity, thereby creating more Covid bed space. (Just to be clear, swamping an enclosed ship with large numbers of patients infected with a highly communicable virus is a terrible idea. Land-based facilities, if existent, are infinitely superior for isolation in this scenario) Only... nobody had thought about how that transfer was supposed to work. Or the legal ramifications of transferring patients from hospitals to US military care. Or any of the other minutiae. Consequently, the Comfort essentially sat there waiting for hospitals to transfer patients and... they didn't. Essentially the same story with Javits (staffed by military medical). What Javits did get tended to be folks the hospitals thought would be unable to pay, and/or Medicaid (ie capped reimbursement rates). The general feeling on the military medical side is that hospitals didn't want to lose the revenue patients represented, and so were retaining as many as possible, even as their doctors, nurses, and staff (rightly so) told the media they'd been working non-stop for weeks. Source: doctors in NYC, people who served at Javits and had colleagues on the Comfort Please see guidelines for HN commenting. Specifically, "Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize. Assume good faith." https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- craftinator 6y ago
  > I don't think [1] suppports that. That's a report from a single hospital. > And critically, NYC, as with all major metros, operates as a system of hospitals. So the data to support your assertion would be total NYC bed & ICU bed capacity & utilization. > "Overwhelmed" means unable to provide care. Yes, and about half of [2] comes from Michael Dowling, the head of the largest hospital system in New York, where he goes on at length about patients dying in hallways having never been treated because they didn't have enough staff, ventilators, bed space etc... Did you not read the articles? > The situation on the Comfort in NYC (swapped my coasts, oops!) was... complicated. The Navy was essentially commanded to "Send a big ship to NYC so it can be seen." This has nothing to do with how overrun NYC hospitals from, nor how effective the Navy hospital ships were at helping ease the burden. And right back at ya: Please see guidelines for HN commenting. Specifically, "Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize. Assume good faith." https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
  - ethbr0 6y ago
    You managed to ignore two other guidelines in one comment, so it's probably not productive for either of us to continue this thread.
    - craftinator 6y ago
      Ah, which ones? Please, if you'd like to argue a point which I made referencing an article, please actually read the article.

ethbr0 6y ago

I don't think [1] suppports that. That's a report from a single hospital. > [...] the ICU is at capacity, patient beds line the hallways of the emergency department, and the morgue is overflowing. [...] has a capacity of about 300 people at any given time They then talk about converting elective space and hallways into bed space. Which was pretty normal everywhere. And critically, NYC, as with all major metros, operates as a system of hospitals. So the data to support your assertion would be total NYC bed & ICU bed capacity & utilization. "Overwhelmed" means unable to provide care. Not busy. Not lacking in specific equipment. Not being diverted to another hospital. It means ambulances showing up with patients and being told "No, we can provide no treatment." The situation on the Comfort in NYC (swapped my coasts, oops!) was... complicated. The Navy was essentially commanded to "Send a big ship to NYC so it can be seen." Everyone I've talked to in Navy medicine thought it was idiotic, for reasons too numerous to list. However, given the order from on high, the least &@$_ed way of fulfilling it was to use the Comfort to offload non-Covid patients from local hospitals, thereby freeing capacity, thereby creating more Covid bed space. (Just to be clear, swamping an enclosed ship with large numbers of patients infected with a highly communicable virus is a terrible idea. Land-based facilities, if existent, are infinitely superior for isolation in this scenario) Only... nobody had thought about how that transfer was supposed to work. Or the legal ramifications of transferring patients from hospitals to US military care. Or any of the other minutiae. Consequently, the Comfort essentially sat there waiting for hospitals to transfer patients and... they didn't. Essentially the same story with Javits (staffed by military medical). What Javits did get tended to be folks the hospitals thought would be unable to pay, and/or Medicaid (ie capped reimbursement rates). The general feeling on the military medical side is that hospitals didn't want to lose the revenue patients represented, and so were retaining as many as possible, even as their doctors, nurses, and staff (rightly so) told the media they'd been working non-stop for weeks. Source: doctors in NYC, people who served at Javits and had colleagues on the Comfort Please see guidelines for HN commenting. Specifically, "Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize. Assume good faith." https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

craftinator 6y ago
> I don't think [1] suppports that. That's a report from a single hospital. > And critically, NYC, as with all major metros, operates as a system of hospitals. So the data to support your assertion would be total NYC bed & ICU bed capacity & utilization. > "Overwhelmed" means unable to provide care. Yes, and about half of [2] comes from Michael Dowling, the head of the largest hospital system in New York, where he goes on at length about patients dying in hallways having never been treated because they didn't have enough staff, ventilators, bed space etc... Did you not read the articles? > The situation on the Comfort in NYC (swapped my coasts, oops!) was... complicated. The Navy was essentially commanded to "Send a big ship to NYC so it can be seen." This has nothing to do with how overrun NYC hospitals from, nor how effective the Navy hospital ships were at helping ease the burden. And right back at ya: Please see guidelines for HN commenting. Specifically, "Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize. Assume good faith." https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- ethbr0 6y ago
  You managed to ignore two other guidelines in one comment, so it's probably not productive for either of us to continue this thread.
  - craftinator 6y ago
    Ah, which ones? Please, if you'd like to argue a point which I made referencing an article, please actually read the article.