Actually, major losses occurred. The moneymaker of all, elective ortho surgeries, was canceled;, all routine preventive care (which were not moneymaker but are my bread and butter); all routine cardiac surgeries were canceled for months. I know many executives and doctors who took significant pay cuts in order to avoid layoffs in the healthcare systems, and some of lost their jobs, from physicians to many others. It is likely going to be a death blow to some small hospitals. This is anticipated to happen again soon–perhaps worse this time. It is a major threat to viability. Here is one article which puts things rather well
The above is from June, with the worst of the shutdown. There was some respite for a few months when the economy opened up again with masks, but it’s likely to all go away again. I really worry about
I agree that we should focus on prevention. Thanks.
Sorry to hear that Randy. I guess some people just have to be on the front line in order to appreciate the magnitude of what is going on. Many more of us can imagine it well enough. Thank you for all you do for us.
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Klax
(The only thing that matters is faith expressed in love.)
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Oh to be in England. Oh I am! Thank GOD! Some idio…syncratic preacher nearly got himself arrested here today. For ‘the greater good’ including his pay cheque.
You are too kind. It seems none of us really knows the struggles the others go through. I can’t imagine the difficulties others are going through. You and I both know folks who are losing their businesses.
I agree with you that there is fault to be found with the medical system, but not only in the USA, because I have seen plenty of evidence that they don’t want’ people in control of their health. They want people feeling helpless and needing medical treatments. It is a several trillions of dollars industry worldwide and it wouldn’t be that without people unable to help themselves. Posting any information that points to a nocebo effect and how a person can gain control over their health gets your posts hidden or deleted. And on this site too. Why is that? Indeed in all of the big pharma funded cancer sites I have been banned for using the words “spontaneous remission”.
I don’t think that leadership was to blame for the high numbers in the USA. After all they sent thousands to nursing facilities and caused a huge number of deaths. I wrote about that here Corona, False Alarm? Questions about a Book - #10 by Ani99 That has near doubled the number of deaths.
I blame the media too. In the USA there is a massive number of media horror stories, where as in China for instance there are only a very small number of media stories on covid 19. People who are terrified can become badly affected as the numbers show. In China the number of deaths are low compared to the number of people. In Australia there has been a big media coverage but most Australians don’t believe the media stories, so it has less effect.
How much of the gun control is contributing to the high number of mass shootings? I don’t think that owing a gun causes people to want to go out and shoot people. On the other hand I suspect that at least some of the mass shooting that appear as random may be contrived. I say that because I see psychiatrists become prominent in the media calling the killers mentally ill and thus branding everyone with a mental illness as potentially dangerous. Why do that?
How do hospitals lose out if the beds are full? Do the elective surgeries and cardiac surgeries etc., make more money? I can understand that the doctors are out of pocket but the hospitals?
Yes, the elective orthopedic surgeries and others like them lose. But if the hospitals are full then how do the hospitals lose out. Who pays for the caring of COVID patients? Do the hospitals carry the tab? Surely they are getting paid to look after patients.
Hospitals get paid a little more for a Covid patient by Medicare (which is what most elderly and therefore high risk patients would have for health coverage), but the resource usage for Covid patients is so huge that the hospital actually loses money on them. Elective surgeries are where they make their money, and in the beginning those surgeries were completely canceled. My area still has them going on, but I imagine the hardest hit areas are probably canceling them again.
Staffing is a huge issue. My local hospital system has plenty of beds and plenty of vents (now that the goal is to avoid the vent unless it’s absolutely necessary, we have a huge surplus of vents), but when the cases rise and hospitalizations follow, more hospital staff get exposed. So you now have a reduction in available staff (they’re either sick or quarantined due to exposure) with a huge increase in need for staff. Covid cases require more attention in the ICU than a typical ICU patient, and they stay longer than, say, a flu patient.
I would echo what Randy and Boscopup said. The medical field has taken a beating from Covid, though hospitals have probably had less impact from it than other institutions. I rent to several doctors, and they have had to cut hours, lay off employees, and several docs I know have been laid off by the hospital groups they work for due to fewer visits. Tele-health visits pay quite a bit less than real visits, and some specialties like dermatology and surgical specialties fine little use for them.
Also, Covid has affected the poor and disadvantaged more, and hospitals have to absorb those costs.
This may be too political, but it should be pointed out. Making masks and COVID a political issue was the worst thing that President Trump could have done.
“An Associated Press analysis reveals that in 376 counties with the highest number of new cases per capita, the overwhelming majority — 93% of those counties — went for Trump, a rate above other less severely hit areas.”
So as we depend ever more on the front line medical workers it is pretty shameless to allow their own security be undermined. Ultimately this is something effective government would and should look out for.
I think this whole media angle is a misdirection by the President to find blame elsewhere. As a person with Narcissistic Personality Disorder, he cannot accept blame for anything that goes wrong, so blaming the media is just part of the pathology. The entire health of a modern democracy is dependent first and foremost on the freedom of speech and by extension, the freedom of the press. An attack on the press is an attack on democracy itself, which is what Trump is all about.
As an Australian, I can tell you that most Australian’s while generally sceptical by nature, still by and large believe the mainstream media. While there have been protests by fringe groups, the overwhelming majority have followed the medical advice, supported by the Prime Minister federally, and the State Premiers, and we have gone into hard lockdown and crushed the virus to now just having had around 10 days in a row nationally with zero new infections or deaths. There will no doubt be little flare-ups, but we have worked together as a nation.
The difference between Australia and the US is that the US is now almost irretrievably polarized and people have allowed themselves to become so bitterly divided into feuding camps along religio-political lines that working together to beat this things seems all but impossible now.
My advice may not be welcome, and I don’t want to offend anyone, but from the outside looking in, it seems that many people would rather die than see the democrats take office, and that this is such a big thing that it is more important than dealing with the virus. This is just madness and it is very worrying and very sad to see the great nation of the United States become the Un-united States and fail so badly at using the power of science coupled with common sense and political will to beat this thing.
As far as guns are concerned, we have very strong gun control laws and have lost only about 60 people to mass shootings in Australia in the last 50 years. We have lost more people to lightning strike in the same time period. This is not because we don’t have problems with mental illness, but because those people who are are mentally ill find it very difficult to get hold of a gun.
You should not be looking to Australia for an example to follow, we should be looking towards the USA. What has happened??
Related to this topic of skepticism, media manipulation, and polarization, we just finished watching a PBS series called Hacking your Mind that was quite interesting, and helps you see where we get manipulated by the powers that be, but ends on a sorta positive episode showing how that same force can be used for good. Highly recommended.
One segment talks about confirmation bias and such, and how we develop narratives to support our position and cling to them despite facts given to the contrary. That is something we see a lot in the faith/science discussion as well as the Covid controversy.
Well said. One of the first steps toward destabilizing a democracy is to demonize the opposition to the point that anything seems preferable to handing power over to them. The U.S. has already passed that marker.
Hi Phil, yes and another good program is The Social Dilemna on Netflix. It is true that big media can be strongly biased, and deliberately so. For example, Fox News was openly set up to promote a strongly conservative viewpoint from the get go. But the Social Dilemna talks about how the algorithms optimized to maximize advertising revenue push people into silos to allow greater targeting and focus, and hence return-on-investment for advertisers. This means that bias and the resulting polarization can also be a mere bi-product of a business strategy blindly managed by AI, rather than the intended centerpiece of it as is the case with Fox News (and others).
We all need to put pressure on our leaders to harness these platforms to the benefit of the community as a whole rather than individuals or groups or bottom line results.
It is my view that Christians are being increasingly pushed further to the right into order to bolster the republican vote because over the years, urban growth has greatly favored the democrats and this will continue. By polarizing Christians and demonizing Democrats as atheistic socialists who want to usher in a godless immoral world, the hard right is doing enormous damage to the institutions it claims to defend, chiefly the public trust in the electoral system, and in the fundamental goodness of people. Once trust is lost, then so is truth and then lies are seen as coming from every side in every discussion and all we have is conspiracy theories - this is the tragedy of today’s US polical landscape.
I think concerned Christians should stand up and be counted here. A strong voice needs to be heard that says that it is time for people of good will to resist and to not be led around by the nose by demagogues like Trump or the party political. We need trust to be restored in the political system. It is time for people to vote with their feet when it comes to using facebook and other systems that polarize us, and boycott those media outlets that refuse to go back to good old serious journalism that at least tried to check facts and show a balanced view. We get the systems we get because we fail to do anything about them. I am just saying that people have been successfully set against each other and this has taken everyone’s attention away from what is really important, and that is to listen, to learn, to compromise and to work together. Instead of Churches becoming part of the republican marketing machine, Christians should take back the pulpit and push a broader and much more inclusive message that seeks to unite all people regardless of their faith.
I have a Christian brother who has been caused a lot of stress because of his disapproval of his minister’s active promotion of this abnormal president. My brother is politically conservative but he is in principle against preaching from the pulpit and values the separation of church and state. I’m not a Christian but I think the church can play a valuable role in society. But emphasizing partisan politics is not the way to go.
I strongly agree with you here. Mass genocide to eliminate people who disagree with you is not a viable way forward. We must expect to live in a diverse society and we need to develop sensitivity to what everyone needs to feel included.