1 in 8 Trump voters lives in a county with no ICU beds

[RandySF]

A central question as the number of confirmed cases of the novel coronavirus continues to climb is whether hospitals will be able to handle the sudden surge in patients. Estimates suggest at least a tenth of those who are infected with the virus and who develop covid-19, the disease associated with the virus, will need hospitalization. Many will require intensive care, straining hospital systems already dealing with the tail end of flu season. This is the motivation behind “flattening the curve” — encouraging people to limit transmission of the virus to keep hospital systems from being overwhelmed.

That calculus assumes there are hospital systems to overwhelm. New analysis from Kaiser Health News published Friday suggests there are millions of Americans who live in counties where there may be no intensive-care unit beds at all. Many live in counties where there are not even hospitals.
The presence of a hospital and of intensive-care units correlates to how rural the county is, as you might expect. But that also means there is a remarkable bit of overlap with politics, given how central the rural vote was to President Trump’s election in 2016.

Comparing the county-level data from Kaiser Health News to 2016 presidential election data, we discovered a remarkable bit of data: About 8.3 million people who voted for Trump in 2016 live in counties where there are no ICU beds or no hospitals. That amounts to about 13 percent of the total votes Trump earned in that election, or one out of every eight votes.



https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2020/03/20/1-8-trump-voters-lives-county-with-no-icu-beds/

[The Magistrate]

1. Jesus Wept, Sir

Shocking. And many rural hospital were put to death by Republican skullduggery over the Affordable Care Act.

[Hassler]

2. Elections have consequences.

[roamer65]

4. [phone]

[Vivienne235729]

5. +10000 EXACTLY!!

[RestoreAmerica2020]

3. Pobrecitos! No really-bet guy in WH will get right on it I'm sure; will send navy hospital

..ship(s) right over--and I'll bet you un penne that they'll believe el pendejo [frikn moron!]

If only they would open their ojos y ojeras [eyes and ears] and listen to la verdad. Perhaps, god forbid will listen when one of their loved ones falls sick with virus bc that the only time they care--it has to affect them, hurt thrm personaly; then and only then will maybe they care about the rest of us--doubt it though..yet, at least they can save themselves, their children.

Honestly, dont know what'll take for them to snap out the racist, bigoted, hate-everyone fog that the seem to wallow in. Did you read ABC poll today? Just f%$#king unbelievable! shrug:

Pobrecitos--poor ignorant people
Verdad--truth

[Gothmog]

6. Who is surprised by this?

[dawg]

7. And lots of us Clinton voters do too!

I'm one of them.

And, to make matters worse, all my Trump-loving neighbors are still going around like normal, probably already spreading the virus around to the point to where it will be near-unavoidable for me and my medically-vulnerable family.