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People will say "well you can't just make more nurses and doctors in 6 months!" However, had we built or repurposed buildings as COVID-specific treatment cente

by tdfx 5y ago

People will say "well you can't just make more nurses and doctors in 6 months!" However, had we built or repurposed buildings as COVID-specific treatment centers there would be a fairly standard treatment protocol that could be applied by people without 4-8 years of medical training, allowing the highly trained nurses and doctors to supervise the process and multiply their effectiveness. Combat soldiers learn basic emergency medical techniques, with some going from knowing nothing to being able to run IVs and be fully certified EMTs in 6-9 months. Stories abound of how bad they are at hitting the vein the first time, but it's certainly preferable to dying in the waiting room. The lack of healthcare capacity has been a conscious choice. There's been no serious effort to build it out. We've chosen to indulge this fantasy that humanity can get control of COVID and we'll just vaccinate it out of existence, despite decades of knowledge about how difficult that would be from our research into other coronaviruses. So when I hear that we need to give up another year of normal life to "keep the hospitals from being overwhelmed", it is frustrating to hear.

dragonwriter 5y ago
> there would be a fairly standard treatment protocol that could be applied by people without 4-8 years of medical training No, there wouldn't, because, among other things, comorbidities that must be managed, especially in the population most COVID hospitalizations come from. > Combat soldiers learn basic emergency medical techniques, even to the point of running IVs Which allows them to serve as, basically, better-than-nothing EMTs in the absence of anyone else, which is useful on the battlefield to keep people alive to get to proper medical care; they don't replace doctors and nurses, though.
- spookthesunset 5y ago
  > which is useful on the battlefield to keep people alive to get to proper medical care This is a battlefield. It's an emergency, remember? Do whatever it takes. We forced people to sacrifice their short-ass lives in lockdown so these people could figure it out. Where is the results? 2 years and these "experts" still want us to continue locking down to protect a healthcare system they had 2 years to build up specifically to manage covid. It's as if every one of our lives is worthless in the eyes of people making excuses. No. We paid with our time--something we'll never get back. It is a complete travesty that governments continue to blame the public for their own inability to figure shit out.
  - dragonwriter 5y ago
    > This is a battlefield. No, it's literally not. > It's an emergency, remember? Yes and all battlefields are emergencies but not all emergencies have the same conditions (and thus make the same measures expedient) as battlefields. > Do whatever it takes. Sure, but what you are suggesting is not what it takes, or something that would be reasonably expected to be useful and effective. > 2 years and these "experts" still want us to continue locking down We never generally locked down in the US and no one is suggesting lockdowns now, so I have no idea what “continue locking down” is supposed to mean. (Some US jurisdictions had brief and mostly unenforced policies that, if enforced, would have been local lockdowns, but even the on paper policies expired without renewal quite some time ago.)
    - spookthesunset 5y ago
      So you are totally okay with the government flushing 2 years of your incredibly short life down the drain to "flatten the curve to build up supplies and healthcare" with zero results? In fact, so little results that many places are locking down yet again like it was march of 2020? Do y'all not value your lives or short time on this earth at all? You should be furious the government is still playing the "protect healthcare capacity" card. They literally wasted 2 years of your life. No results. And they have the audacity to blame you and the rest of society for their failure!! How on earth is that excusable?
      - dragonwriter 5y ago
        > So you are totally okay with the government flushing 2 years of your incredibly short life down the drain I reject that that's an even remotely accurate description of anything that has happened, or has any other relevancd to reality. > many places are locking down yet again What places? Unless you are using “locking down” as loosely as you’ve used “battlefield”, that's not actually happening, anywhere. > And they have the audacity to blame you The only people I’ve seen anyone in government even approximately blame are particular government decision-makers who allegedly deliberately acted to make things worse and the unvaccinated, neither group of which included me. So, again, I reject that this description is grounded in reality.
davidw 5y ago
> give up another year IDK, I'm in a fairly 'cautious' state, and things are pretty normal. My kids are in school, stores are open. Restaurants are open. People wear masks. It's not really a big deal.
- spookthesunset 5y ago
  > People wear masks. It's not really a big deal. Do you wear masks 8 hours a day for work? 'Cause I'm sure all the people who do might beg to differ. Plus masks interfere with communication. Faces are important.
  - davidw 5y ago
    My kids wear masks all day long and school. They do not love it, but they complain way less than some people do about wearing one for 20 minutes in a grocery store. I wore an N95 on a series of flights to Europe over the summer. It was not the most pleasant thing, but I was ok with it. Doctors and nurses regularly work 8/10/12 hours while masked up.

by tdfx 5y ago

dragonwriter 5y ago

> there would be a fairly standard treatment protocol that could be applied by people without 4-8 years of medical training No, there wouldn't, because, among other things, comorbidities that must be managed, especially in the population most COVID hospitalizations come from. > Combat soldiers learn basic emergency medical techniques, even to the point of running IVs Which allows them to serve as, basically, better-than-nothing EMTs in the absence of anyone else, which is useful on the battlefield to keep people alive to get to proper medical care; they don't replace doctors and nurses, though.

spookthesunset 5y ago
> which is useful on the battlefield to keep people alive to get to proper medical care This is a battlefield. It's an emergency, remember? Do whatever it takes. We forced people to sacrifice their short-ass lives in lockdown so these people could figure it out. Where is the results? 2 years and these "experts" still want us to continue locking down to protect a healthcare system they had 2 years to build up specifically to manage covid. It's as if every one of our lives is worthless in the eyes of people making excuses. No. We paid with our time--something we'll never get back. It is a complete travesty that governments continue to blame the public for their own inability to figure shit out.
- dragonwriter 5y ago
  > This is a battlefield. No, it's literally not. > It's an emergency, remember? Yes and all battlefields are emergencies but not all emergencies have the same conditions (and thus make the same measures expedient) as battlefields. > Do whatever it takes. Sure, but what you are suggesting is not what it takes, or something that would be reasonably expected to be useful and effective. > 2 years and these "experts" still want us to continue locking down We never generally locked down in the US and no one is suggesting lockdowns now, so I have no idea what “continue locking down” is supposed to mean. (Some US jurisdictions had brief and mostly unenforced policies that, if enforced, would have been local lockdowns, but even the on paper policies expired without renewal quite some time ago.)
  - spookthesunset 5y ago
    So you are totally okay with the government flushing 2 years of your incredibly short life down the drain to "flatten the curve to build up supplies and healthcare" with zero results? In fact, so little results that many places are locking down yet again like it was march of 2020? Do y'all not value your lives or short time on this earth at all? You should be furious the government is still playing the "protect healthcare capacity" card. They literally wasted 2 years of your life. No results. And they have the audacity to blame you and the rest of society for their failure!! How on earth is that excusable?
    - dragonwriter 5y ago
      > So you are totally okay with the government flushing 2 years of your incredibly short life down the drain I reject that that's an even remotely accurate description of anything that has happened, or has any other relevancd to reality. > many places are locking down yet again What places? Unless you are using “locking down” as loosely as you’ve used “battlefield”, that's not actually happening, anywhere. > And they have the audacity to blame you The only people I’ve seen anyone in government even approximately blame are particular government decision-makers who allegedly deliberately acted to make things worse and the unvaccinated, neither group of which included me. So, again, I reject that this description is grounded in reality.

davidw 5y ago

> give up another year IDK, I'm in a fairly 'cautious' state, and things are pretty normal. My kids are in school, stores are open. Restaurants are open. People wear masks. It's not really a big deal.

spookthesunset 5y ago
> People wear masks. It's not really a big deal. Do you wear masks 8 hours a day for work? 'Cause I'm sure all the people who do might beg to differ. Plus masks interfere with communication. Faces are important.
- davidw 5y ago
  My kids wear masks all day long and school. They do not love it, but they complain way less than some people do about wearing one for 20 minutes in a grocery store. I wore an N95 on a series of flights to Europe over the summer. It was not the most pleasant thing, but I was ok with it. Doctors and nurses regularly work 8/10/12 hours while masked up.