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Some of these places have like 400 ICU beds in a region of 17 million people. You absolutely could 10x that or even 50x that given the fact you have asked hundr

Some of these places have like 400 ICU beds in a region of 17 million people. You absolutely could 10x that or even 50x that given the fact you have asked hundreds of millions of people to put their lives on hold. Vaccination was the end goal because it would mean we could reduce all that emergency capacity we were supposed to build up. Non pharmacutical interventions like masks, social distancing and lockdowns for healthy people are extreme asks and should be used for extremely short durations while you pour your nations entire pool of resources into building healthcare capacity up. What amazes me is somehow we managed to do exactly this back in march of 2020 with hospital ships and field hospitals. The fact that all of these were shutdown virtually unused after a month but we continued with all these stay-at-home orders shows exactly how little respect these "experts" and government officials have for the general public. The day those things closed was the day we should have gone back to full normal. That these "experts" doubled down on this crap is so immoral and unethical it amazes me people continued to support it.

rsynnott 5y ago
> Some of these places have like 400 ICU beds in a region of 17 million people. That is, of course, far too few (Where is that? I've never heard of a ratio _that_ low for a developed country). But unfortunately, the time to fix it was about five years before it became a major crisis. > You absolutely could 10x that or even 50x that given the fact you have asked hundreds of millions of people to put their lives on hold. With what staff? > What amazes me is somehow we managed to do exactly this back in march of 2020 with hospital ships and field hospitals. As far as I can see, those were envisaged as a solution to a regional problem; if covid was only a big problem in a few regions, then this could work via redeployment of staff, drawing on limited reserves of staff (military, bringing people back from retirement, and so on). In practice, very few countries managed to maintain covid as a regional problem, so temporary hospitals became less interesting because _you can't staff them_.
- spookthesunset 5y ago
  Bullshit you can’t staff them. You have entire nations worth of resources at your disposal. You absolutely could staff a Covid ICU in a month if it was truly an emergency. It would be janky and imperfect but you could do it. It’s an emergency after all. You don’t have time for perfection. It’s 100% excuses. If healthcare capacity was an actual issue we’d have fixed it already and gone back to pre-pandemic normal.
  - selimthegrim 5y ago
    Hospital pointy haired bosses and admins like ICUs at 80% capacity.
- riekus 5y ago
  That ratio is in the Netherlands. Which also has huge costs associated with lockdowns

rsynnott 5y ago

> Some of these places have like 400 ICU beds in a region of 17 million people. That is, of course, far too few (Where is that? I've never heard of a ratio _that_ low for a developed country). But unfortunately, the time to fix it was about five years before it became a major crisis. > You absolutely could 10x that or even 50x that given the fact you have asked hundreds of millions of people to put their lives on hold. With what staff? > What amazes me is somehow we managed to do exactly this back in march of 2020 with hospital ships and field hospitals. As far as I can see, those were envisaged as a solution to a regional problem; if covid was only a big problem in a few regions, then this could work via redeployment of staff, drawing on limited reserves of staff (military, bringing people back from retirement, and so on). In practice, very few countries managed to maintain covid as a regional problem, so temporary hospitals became less interesting because _you can't staff them_.

spookthesunset 5y ago
Bullshit you can’t staff them. You have entire nations worth of resources at your disposal. You absolutely could staff a Covid ICU in a month if it was truly an emergency. It would be janky and imperfect but you could do it. It’s an emergency after all. You don’t have time for perfection. It’s 100% excuses. If healthcare capacity was an actual issue we’d have fixed it already and gone back to pre-pandemic normal.
- selimthegrim 5y ago
  Hospital pointy haired bosses and admins like ICUs at 80% capacity.
riekus 5y ago
That ratio is in the Netherlands. Which also has huge costs associated with lockdowns