Welp, There Goes That.

There it is. At home we have to fight anti-vaxxers and anti-maskers (truly an odd sickness, though not one confined to our country) while real nations fight the pandemic like the social scourge that it is. And sure you have to think about China's covid zero policy as being negative, but that doesn't take into account the glaring unknown (with growing evidence that it's bad) that getting the damn virus and surviving is no cake walk either. You have the chance for increase brain fog as well as heart attacks (yeah without the vax it's worse). 

But the our system is broken and fast crashing. A trauma hospital (one of 2 level 1s in Atlanta) is going to close. And, apparently, rural hospitals all over the US are closing down (been doing it for a while now, but that has now accelerated because COVID):

I used to work in that ED. It was built decades ago with an expected daily census of about 50, or so I was told. It is tiny. Tenet had no interest in investing ED expansion when they owned it, and clearly neither did Wellstar.

When I was there they had a total of 16 main beds with monitors, plus an additional 5 in a fast track area (which was typically closed at night). There were 4 psych hold rooms and a 10 chair ambulatory care area that, given the patient population (lots of homeless and indigent people without primary care) stayed full around the clock. The trauma bay (just one) was smaller than any of the four trauma bays Wellstar ran at the old ED at their flagship hospital.

Still, when I was there the daily census hovered more around 150, with a heavy EMS component (up to 40-50%). Hall beds were permanent fixtures.

So yeah, factor in staffing issues, floor and ICU holds (also usually due to staffing issues), and the occasional multicar MVC, and the place could get swamped pretty quickly. Having only ~20 actual beds means space is tight.

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