How did all those Haitians get to the southern border?

[Teacher Terry]

In many areas people can’t get elective surgery because the hospitals are full of Covid. Locally a teenager spent 8 hours in the ER waiting for a bed and his appendix burst.

[Yppej]

Here is the story I saw on delayed surgeries:

https://www.nbcnews.com/nightly-news...c-122543685907

[rosarugosa]

We discovered in my wife's recent hospital stay that our local hospitals have all gone to one person rooms rather than two due to covid protocols. This has significantly diminished the available beds.

Interesting, and it certainly makes sense.

[jp1]

A friend of mine was telling me about a friend of hers in Alabama. A few weeks ago she, her husband, and three sons all had covid. The sons’ cases were all mild so they were outside playing and found their dad’s machete and managed to slice off the end of the finger of the 8 year old. Worried about taking covid to the hospital she called and asked what to do. The hospital said not to worry about it. Everyone there had covid so they weren’t doing anything to try and contain it beyond standard procedures.

[Alan]

The hospital said not to worry about it. Everyone there had covid so they weren’t doing anything to try and contain it beyond standard procedures.

I often wonder just how much of this third party information gets exaggerated during the telling. As I mentioned earlier our first hand experience at a local hospital last week showed that the hospital wasn't filled beyond capacity with covid patients forcing others to wait for treatment but rather that the number of hospital beds were cut practically in half in support of covid protocols. The 60 room wing we were in for several days housed two covid patients during that time according to nurses assigned to my wife and their hospitalization wasn't because of covid, but for other ailments they were suffering concurrently.

I don't want to diminish the horrors of covid by any means but I think we'd all be a little less anxious if we didn't put too much faith in third party accounts we've heard somewhere or which appear in commercial news sources.

[Yppej]

A friend of mine was telling me about a friend of hers in Alabama. A few weeks ago she, her husband, and three sons all had covid. The sons’ cases were all mild so they were outside playing and found their dad’s machete and managed to slice off the end of the finger of the 8 year old. Worried about taking covid to the hospital she called and asked what to do. The hospital said not to worry about it. Everyone there had covid so they weren’t doing anything to try and contain it beyond standard procedures.

Covid will be with us forever and it is about time the medical establishment starts treating it as endemic instead of pandemic. I wish this were the case where I am.

Although many die every year of the flu we don't constantly test asymptomatic people for the flu, confine them to their homes if they are healthy but test positive, do extensive contract tracing so we can force other people who feel fine to quarantine, and in general wreak havoc in schools and workplaces by hunting for the flu virus.

There is a vaccine for covid, there are a variety of treatments available. Time to move on. And yes, that includes masks being optional.

An endemic approach focuses on caring for those severely impacted.

[pinkytoe]

I think all the excessive worry, panic and sensational media stories about Covid are the exact opposite of simple living - unnecessary complexity.