100 tests. Total. For a VA health system that serves 9 million vets. Half of which are over 65. This is not getting enough national attention. The President, @SecWilkie and Congress must be pressed on it. #IYNAYNPA https://t.co/ZvPe8RsJVo— Paul Rieckhoff (@PaulRieckhoff) March 16, 2020
And if "social distancing" has to extend to July or August? What do the bars and restaurants do? The airlines want $50 billion. What do the restaurants and bars get? Bupkis? Congratulations on keeping us (relatively) healthy? Especially if the better we postpone the crisis, the longer we prolong the crisis?
To rephrase that: if the policy succeeds, the same number of people will likely get sick, just over a longer period of time.
This will help the hospitals cope, no doubt. Fewer patients will be competing over the same limited number of ventilators, and hospitals will stay less crowded.
But it’s a real, paradoxical side effect of success in fighting the epidemic. That slowing the disease’s spread means prolonging the time we all have to spend living with it.
That also means that interventions like social distancing need to occur as soon as possible to have the desired effect.
"Soon" is an issue; but so is "for a very long time." Once you start it, how long will people tolerate it? And if they don't tolerate it long enough, have you solved the healthcare problem? Or just postponed it?
Not to mention every other line of work that involves physical contact, hairdressers (there goes one niece's job and she's the sole supporter of her family), people who do nails, barbers, tattoos(though they should be out of business anyway), physio therapists, chiropractors, and that's in addition to all of the people in local restaurants who don't do take-out, two of my nieces and the spouse of one of them are surely going to be out of work very soon, not to mention those who get health insurance through such work . . .
ReplyDeleteThis is what happens when you make medicine for-profit and don't regulate things like the meat industry, strictly. I'm expecting that sooner or later the viral pandemic is going to come from a US or Canadian factory farm.
I'm hoping this will finish off the Republicans but who knows if FOX et al will lie them into control. This is what happens when lies are privileged by the law.