Our petty tyrant governor gave an impassioned press conference yesterday when he implored Louisiana to redouble it's efforts to fight the dreaded Wu-Flu. He had a guest speaker, some idiot named Thomas, who declared that we are all health-care workers now and should do everything we can to reduce the spread of the virus. His argument was that the hospitals have the beds, but not enough staffing to provide critical care.
The doctor said every Louisiana resident should consider themselves a “healthcare provider” because they have the ability to prevent the virus from spreading to others particularly, their loved ones.
The doc might recall that the draft ended in 1973. The US no longer forces people into service, either in the military nor in health care. I didn't sign up to be a health-care worker. Of course, in his hyper-scientific world of critical care, he's the boss. He doesn't have tie to study things like history, We now believe that it is better to convince people to enter certain career fields, through incentives, not coercion.
But, then we get to his real distress.
Dr. Thomas said the issue with hospital capacity is not whether a hospital has enough beds but instead whether a hospital has adequate staff to care for both COVID-19 and non-COVID-19 patients. He said his staff is tired and stressed out and with more COVID-19 patients, the more likely hospital staffers are to contract the virus themselves. The doctor also said additional personnel cannot be brought in from other parts of the U.S. because hospitals in every state are also dealing with a surge in patients.
It sounds like y'all have horrible staffing issues, Doc. And, this bozo works for the LSu system, which is the largest trainer of physicians in the state of Louisiana. How many did they graduate last year? How many registered nurses? Not enough, evidently. Now, he's pleading with us to not overwhelm his hospitals. They gt caught flat-footed by the Wu-flu and now they want us to make up the shortfall.
I would sugest to Doc Thomas that their medical staffing charts are totally insufficient to a pandemic, and that perhaps they should take a hard look at what is necessary during an emergency. The last pandemic in the US, by all accounts, was in 1918 during the Spanish Flu epidemic.
We make 100-year flood maps to guide us in our planning. Perhaps the medical profess should make 100-year pandemic maps to guide their staffing. But, the last thing the medical profession should do is blame us for their lack of planning.
As a young army officer, I had conversation with a young physician. I told that youn physician that in the atomic age, we could provide her with 10,000 critical burn patients in the space of about 15 minutes. I asked her if the medical profession was up to the challenge. She said "No.". Perhaps it's time for the medical profession to quit whining an get busy. They chose the field. It's what they signed up for.
