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I have friends and family who have had to delay lifesaving medical procedures because hospitals are still swamped and medical personnel are still overworked fro

I have friends and family who have had to delay lifesaving medical procedures because hospitals are still swamped and medical personnel are still overworked from dealing with the COVID cases we currently have. Societal standards for risk still need to take into account far, far more than just "Am I, personally, going to die from exactly this one risk factor?"

oceanplexian 5y ago
I agree, however the obvious answer is that society should then build more hospitals and train more nurses, the same way that China did in 2020. Not plunge the economy into debt and force millions of people to change their behavior because of a broken system.
- throwaway946513 5y ago
  > obvious answer is that society should then build more hospitals and train more nurses The number of hard to get nurses? Or say - funding for building hospitals that operate on profit? System still and likely seems to perpetually be broken.
- PaulDavisThe1st 5y ago
  > the obvious answer is that society [ ... ] Nobody could even get society to do basic pandemic stuff like wear masks or take vaccines. How would they ever coordinate "build more hospitals and train more nurses" ? Also, what is this "society" you speak of? There are very very few hospital facilities in the USA built as public institutions, or even with (much) public funding. That's now how things work in capitalism.
  - s1artibartfast 5y ago
    >Nobody could even get society to do basic pandemic stuff like wear masks or take vaccines. How would they ever coordinate "build more hospitals and train more nurses" The answer is pretty simple. You don't need mass coordination to build more hospitals. It requires 1 person (the president) to agree to build emergency hospitals, or at worst 51% of 535 people in congress. Compare this to requiring 330 million people to continually agree and coordinate basic pandemic behavior like masks and vaccines. There are less than 1000 covid ICU patients in California today and 12,000 in the entire country. China built a 1000 bed covid hospital in 10 days and staffed it with army nurses.
    - dragonwriter 5y ago
      > It requires 1 person (the president) to agree to build emergency hospitals, or at worst 51% of 535 people in congress. At worst, it takes 60% of the Senate (because cloture), 218/435 in the House, plus the President to pass the law to do it federally, and then someone invokes the judiciary via lawsuits over federal authorities (“building hospitals is not an enumerated power”).
      - s1artibartfast 5y ago
        I think the point still stands. But if we want to be pedantic, you are assuming a filibuster and controversy. I think that could be done entirely by executive action, using administrative actions, like 900 billion dollars of other covid spending that had no legislative approval. I suppose states and governors could sue to have federal hospitals treating their residents torn down in the middle of a pandemic, but that would be terrible PR.
        PaulDavisThe1st 5y ago
        > I suppose states and governors could sue to have federal hospitals treating their residents torn down in the middle of a pandemic, but that would be terrible PR. Worse than suing to prevent schools or towns from requiring masks? Worse than suing to prevent "vaccine mandates"? I'm sure you'll see it differently than I do. > But if we want to be pedantic, you are assuming a filibuster and controversy. I don't think you have to assume much to believe that at the present time, not a single Republican senator would vote in favor or such a measure if it was backed by the current president.
        dragonwriter 5y ago
        > But if we want to be pedantic, you are assuming a filibuster and controversy. Since we're talking about what it takes to force a preferred solution in the absence of consensus, and you specifically said you were targeting the worst case, yes, I’m doing exactly what you called for.
- salamandersauce 5y ago
  Oh OK. How many years will that take? You can't just staff these new hospitals with just new nurses, you need doctors and other support staff. We have a vaccine now. If everybody just got it when they could we could start to move on without spending millions or billions building new hospitals and paying people to train to become nurses and doctors in half a decade.
  - s1artibartfast 5y ago
    China built a 1000 bed covid hospital in 10 days and staffed it with army nurses. Compare this to requiring 330 million people to continually agree and coordinate basic pandemic behavior like masks and vaccines. Costs are largely irrelevant. Perhaps 100 million for such a hospital. This is 0.0001% of the 6+ trillion the government has spent on other covid actions.
    - pfg 5y ago
      There's a reason China hasn't made this their strategy for the rest of the pandemic. It works as a stop-gap, if you accept low quality of care (read: high mortality) and if you're dealing with a regional outbreak where you can ship in resources from surrounding areas. It's not going to work if the entire country, continent or planet is in the same situation.
    - rsynnott 5y ago
      Building hospitals isn't the problem; staffing them is. China was able to do this because that outbreak was a regional, not national, problem.
- rsynnott 5y ago
  > however the obvious answer is that society should then build more hospitals and train more nurses And if you have a time machine, that's a great solution. Just go back about 7 years and tell them "we'll be needing a lot more medical staff around 2020, get training them, please". It's not really a wonderful solution now, though, due to the very long lead times for training staff. > the same way that China did in 2020 While China did build more hospitals in 2020, it leaned heavily on redeployment of staff from non-impacted regions, because it was always largely able to keep covid a regional problem. It wasn't just producing new doctors and nurses in a week; they were coming from elsewhere. When covid is endemic, this option doesn't work very well.

oceanplexian 5y ago

I agree, however the obvious answer is that society should then build more hospitals and train more nurses, the same way that China did in 2020. Not plunge the economy into debt and force millions of people to change their behavior because of a broken system.

throwaway946513 5y ago
> obvious answer is that society should then build more hospitals and train more nurses The number of hard to get nurses? Or say - funding for building hospitals that operate on profit? System still and likely seems to perpetually be broken.
PaulDavisThe1st 5y ago
> the obvious answer is that society [ ... ] Nobody could even get society to do basic pandemic stuff like wear masks or take vaccines. How would they ever coordinate "build more hospitals and train more nurses" ? Also, what is this "society" you speak of? There are very very few hospital facilities in the USA built as public institutions, or even with (much) public funding. That's now how things work in capitalism.
- s1artibartfast 5y ago
  >Nobody could even get society to do basic pandemic stuff like wear masks or take vaccines. How would they ever coordinate "build more hospitals and train more nurses" The answer is pretty simple. You don't need mass coordination to build more hospitals. It requires 1 person (the president) to agree to build emergency hospitals, or at worst 51% of 535 people in congress. Compare this to requiring 330 million people to continually agree and coordinate basic pandemic behavior like masks and vaccines. There are less than 1000 covid ICU patients in California today and 12,000 in the entire country. China built a 1000 bed covid hospital in 10 days and staffed it with army nurses.
  - dragonwriter 5y ago
    > It requires 1 person (the president) to agree to build emergency hospitals, or at worst 51% of 535 people in congress. At worst, it takes 60% of the Senate (because cloture), 218/435 in the House, plus the President to pass the law to do it federally, and then someone invokes the judiciary via lawsuits over federal authorities (“building hospitals is not an enumerated power”).
    - s1artibartfast 5y ago
      I think the point still stands. But if we want to be pedantic, you are assuming a filibuster and controversy. I think that could be done entirely by executive action, using administrative actions, like 900 billion dollars of other covid spending that had no legislative approval. I suppose states and governors could sue to have federal hospitals treating their residents torn down in the middle of a pandemic, but that would be terrible PR.
      - PaulDavisThe1st 5y ago
        > I suppose states and governors could sue to have federal hospitals treating their residents torn down in the middle of a pandemic, but that would be terrible PR. Worse than suing to prevent schools or towns from requiring masks? Worse than suing to prevent "vaccine mandates"? I'm sure you'll see it differently than I do. > But if we want to be pedantic, you are assuming a filibuster and controversy. I don't think you have to assume much to believe that at the present time, not a single Republican senator would vote in favor or such a measure if it was backed by the current president.
      - dragonwriter 5y ago
        > But if we want to be pedantic, you are assuming a filibuster and controversy. Since we're talking about what it takes to force a preferred solution in the absence of consensus, and you specifically said you were targeting the worst case, yes, I’m doing exactly what you called for.
salamandersauce 5y ago
Oh OK. How many years will that take? You can't just staff these new hospitals with just new nurses, you need doctors and other support staff. We have a vaccine now. If everybody just got it when they could we could start to move on without spending millions or billions building new hospitals and paying people to train to become nurses and doctors in half a decade.
- s1artibartfast 5y ago
  China built a 1000 bed covid hospital in 10 days and staffed it with army nurses. Compare this to requiring 330 million people to continually agree and coordinate basic pandemic behavior like masks and vaccines. Costs are largely irrelevant. Perhaps 100 million for such a hospital. This is 0.0001% of the 6+ trillion the government has spent on other covid actions.
  - pfg 5y ago
    There's a reason China hasn't made this their strategy for the rest of the pandemic. It works as a stop-gap, if you accept low quality of care (read: high mortality) and if you're dealing with a regional outbreak where you can ship in resources from surrounding areas. It's not going to work if the entire country, continent or planet is in the same situation.
  - rsynnott 5y ago
    Building hospitals isn't the problem; staffing them is. China was able to do this because that outbreak was a regional, not national, problem.
rsynnott 5y ago
> however the obvious answer is that society should then build more hospitals and train more nurses And if you have a time machine, that's a great solution. Just go back about 7 years and tell them "we'll be needing a lot more medical staff around 2020, get training them, please". It's not really a wonderful solution now, though, due to the very long lead times for training staff. > the same way that China did in 2020 While China did build more hospitals in 2020, it leaned heavily on redeployment of staff from non-impacted regions, because it was always largely able to keep covid a regional problem. It wasn't just producing new doctors and nurses in a week; they were coming from elsewhere. When covid is endemic, this option doesn't work very well.