Wednesday, March 4, 2020

Wednesday Sunshine: Brace For Impact


















From the masthead quote today at WRSA:
How many ICU beds are vacant tonight in FUSA, and how long will they remain so?

Ours are full-up, we’re holding ICU patients in the ER for hours/days, and that’s with no Kung Flu cases in either place.

In fact, it’s most days 24/7/365, most places, at least in the 10% of the U.S. population where I move and work.

And three major hospitals in OC put up Kung Flu screening tents outside their hospitals yesterday. We’ll hopefully be #4 or #5 in the county, depending on how long it takes TPTB some places to break suction and pull their heads out.

TPTB locally, at least, are starting to grok that this shit ain’t “just the flu”, that Happygas B.S. ain’t going to cut it, and that the CDC is always going to be two weeks to a month behind the curve, because recto-cranial impaction and civil service levels of competence.

If general hospital visits go up 10%/day because of this, we’re hammered.
If they go up 20%, everyone’s f**ked until it ends.
Period.

And due to lack of space, staff, and PPE, in short order, if you aren’t ICU-sick coming in if/when this gets hot and heavy, you’ll be bounced RTF out. That’s how triage works in a pandemic.

That’s before we talk about staff/EMS calling in sick, or actually getting sick.

When you start seeing agencies dedicate fully-suited hazmat paramedic teams rolling on potential Kung Flu cases 24/7, and delivering them to designated Kung Flu triage/treatment locations, just like they did/do with Ebola in Shitholia and Trashcanistan, Shit will officially be Real.

My guesstimate is that will happen once they lose entire fire crews responding to medical cases to a bout of the Kung Flu. Who then pass it along to their wives and kids. And their spouses’ employers. And their kids’ schools. And then back to their parents. Lather. Rinse. Repeat. Pandemic.

My best guess is that we’re now where Wuhan was in mid-December last.
See where we are in 75 day or so, and re-evaluate.

If none of that happens, happy days.

I’m not betting on happy days, but I’d love to be pleasantly surprised.
YMMV

***UPDATE***:
Italy closing all schools and universities nationwide, for at least two weeks.
TL;DR?: The West has just heard the first rape whistle blow.

Brace for impact.

SHIT JUST GOT REAL.

15 comments:

jon said...

What are the chances spring break is going to make this go wide (you know cold enough for when they get back they get sick and teenagers know everything)?

Bee Ess said...

I've been thinking about spring break now for a month. All those college students leaving, drinking, clustering, returning. Not my idea of a good time this year. Maybe, just maaaaybe, the situation will change enough that spring break will extend to "extended break 2020".

Rex said...

@jon

Have you looked at the map of Europe? A lot of that is from people going on spring break to the most infected areas of Italy and bringing it back home elsewhere in Europe. "Spring" break basically rolls weekly from the beginning of February until mid March. Watch what happens to the Czech Republic in the next couple of weeks. First case showed up on Sunday March 1. Now there are five cases, all Italy related. The American university student from Milan went on a tour of Europe with her friend going from Milan to Budapest to Vienna to Prague when she started having symptoms. She was doing the spring break tourist thing. Her friend just started showing symptoms and became case #5 her in CZ.

Retired Mustang said...

I worked in the OR for a long time. Once things begin to backup, especially in the more critical areas, everything backs up. Then, once the ER is affected, the hospital goes on diversion...until all the hospitals are on diversion, at which point no one is on diversion. Most people haven't considered what that means if it lasts long enough to become the norm. That shit ball would be enormous, fast and destroying anything approximating effective healthcare.

Ominous Cowherd said...

Then, once the ER is affected, the hospital goes on diversion...until all the hospitals are on diversion, at which point no one is on diversion.
...
That shit ball would be enormous, fast and destroying anything approximating effective healthcare.

It doesn't have to be very bad at all to be that bad. Twenty percent of the population getting it at once is about 66 million. Just two percent of them needing critical care at once is 1.32 million. What does 1.32 million more ICU patients do to everybody's standard of care?

Looking at the numbers coming from Italy, 20% and 2% might both be crazy low.

nick flandrey said...

Look at total deaths as a percentage of resolved cases for countries we're pretty sure are reporting accurate numbers....

https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/#countries

That is a MUCH uglier number than "3.4%"

If you get it, and are sick enough to need hospitalization, your risk of dying is VERY HIGH.

n

Unknown said...

yawn. more gloom and doom. if i had a penny for every time some fire chief or hospital administrator hit the panic button, was completely unprepared, then just plain wrong, i could have retired at 39 instead of 49. nonetheless, i have a responsibility to be the designated prick in charge to keep my family safe. this will be another non event, and we will chuckle from afar. best of luck out there in trannyland. stocking up on big shoes and clown outfits here.

TechieDude said...

Looks like Washington State is ahead of the curve!

https://youtu.be/5jhwyAsZAvo

Top Men. Top. Men.

The Gray Man said...

We have 40ish ICU beds at our hospital (ish, because periodic renovations and other factors make it fluctuate, but that’s average), the next hospital in town has about the same, and the other hospital has about 20. None of the hospitals ever go below 75%, and the ERs are routinely holding a patient or two while inpatients get moved around. Like you said; adding even a 10% increase is going to keep all three at bypass level permanently, and when everyone is on bypass, no one is on bypass. We stack patients in the halls.

Bezzle said...

"Medical screener at LAX airport tests positive for coronavirus"

Lift up your tongue and say "Ahh!" in my face.

Kafiroon said...

It might be good to explain what the results of Triage will mean.
Might help some to think about what they are doing.

A Texan said...

Four tidbits:

1) I'm in San Antonio. We had someone admitted to the local infectious disease hospital on Monday with CV (this hospital has all 11 of our other ***DIAGNOSED*** cases). The "funny" thing is that this person went to Northstar Mall (a VERY big mall, the one with the huge boots on the outside for those who know SATX) on Saturday night.

2) My daughter is a HS senior in JROTC. One of the other kids in that program has been sick for a month, and had been out for a week with "the flu." Well, she never got much better, and the parents made her go to school. She was supposedly going for a CV test today (I wonder where you get one of those, since the CDC only started making ones that actually work about a week ago).

3) My mother is in the hospital (flu and pneumonia), and has been for 3 weeks. I don't suspect CV for her...but I couldn't find a place to park AT ALL this morning in a very large, 4-story (no, 5, including the roof) parking garage.

4) Sam's Club is now limiting water purchases to 5 cases per account (per day, one would assume). I got 4 this morning, to add to at least 10 that I got in the last few days. STILL no hand sanitizer for sale, and they have no idea about when it'll be re-stocked. I noticed when I went in this morning that EVERYONE coming out had several cases of water.

As Aesop has said, this shit is getting real.

johnnyrotten said...

Yes, I have lots of dehydrated food at the house but needed something at WM the other day, I noticed lots of people doing what I considered normal shopping but also noticed every one of them also had 3-4 cases of water. That’s when I figured I better get ahead of this a bit....20 cases of water, 4 of those ‘water bob’ things, 8 life straws, 2 car loads of food we normally eat....well, you get the idea. We will have more than we need but I’m guessing there’s a neighbor or two we might want I help out if needed.
Then, if it gets REALLY hairy, head to the fail-safe location.

Anonymous said...

Sit rep from Southern New England: Went to Costco today b/c I forgot Swiffer refills. Anyway, things looked fairly picked over. However I usually go first thing AM Sat when I go, not an hour before closing during the week and at the start of the month at that. Only two things stuck out: 50lb rice bags were limited to 5 and the paper goods area was nearly empty. I have seen the paper goods drawn down like this before so can't say its related to Kung Flu. Other than rice no staples, canned goods, Lysol/Clorox, and cleaning/soap supplies in general were out or marked for limits. That may change if we get a local case.

Then again I'm in blue country where faith in .gov runs pretty deep.

Robin Datta said...

WHO says that KungFlu is containable: one has to agree. Presuming of course, that the coffins are hermetically sealed. Once they run out of coffins, hermetically sealed body bags. And once they run out of those, maybe the same for the plastic liner for mass graves.

A simple solution to the problem would be to quarantine the planet. I guess the International Space Station will have to be supplied first with packages of deconning supplies that are themselves deconned, followed by regular supplies to be deconned on arrival.

TPTB emmeffs don't realize that fully hazmatted EMS/paramedic crews traipsing down the streets of Urbanistan would be a dead giveaway that KungFlu is already loose and on the prowl.