In Rural NE Missouri, A Hospital At Capacity In A Town Where Most People Think It's All A Hoax

[hatrack]

EDIT

Memphis, Missouri, is the biggest town for miles and miles amid the cornfields of the north-eastern corner of this midwestern state. Agriculture accounts for most jobs in the region. The area is so remote that the nearest stoplight, McDonald’s and Walmart are all an hour away, the hospital public relations director, Alisa Kigar, said. People come to the hospital from six surrounding counties, typically for treatment of things like farm and sports injuries, chest pains and the flu. Usually, there’s plenty of room.

Not now. The small hospital with roughly six doctors and 75 nurses among 142 full-time staff, is in crisis. The region is seeing a big increase in Covid-19 cases, and all available beds are usually taken. Scotland county hospital’s doctors are already making difficult, often heartbreaking decisions about who they can take in. Wilson said some moderately ill people have been sent home with oxygen and told, “If things get worse, come back in, but we don’t have a place to put you and we don’t have a place to transfer you.”

EDIT

The hospital’s chief nursing officer, Elizabeth Guffey, said nurses were working up to 24 extra hours each week. Guffey sometimes sleeps in an office rather than go home between shifts. “We’re in a surge capacity almost 100% of the time,” Guffey said. “So it’s all hands on deck.” It’s especially difficult to watch friends and relatives struggle through the illness while a large majority of the community still doesn’t take it seriously, she said. “We spend our time indoors taking care of these very sick people, and then we go outdoors and hear people tell us the disease is a hoax or it doesn’t really exist,” Guffey said.

EDIT

(Ed. - Dr. Shane) Wilson spent hours on the phone one day, trying to find a larger hospital capable of providing the critical care that might save a man in his 50s who was critically ill with the virus. By the time the University of Iowa hospital agreed to take him, it was clear he couldn’t survive the 120-mile trip. “I don’t know that getting him to Iowa City would have made a difference,” Wilson said. “Sometimes people are sick enough that they’re not going to survive, and that’s the reality of what we have to deal with.”

EDIT

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/dec/02/coronavirus-surge-devastating-rural-america

[DeminPennswoods]

1. All they have to do is call the local Army Corps of Engineers

who will gladly show them how to turn moveable storage pods into extra rooms.

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2020/08/03/urgent-care-from-the-army-corps-of-engineers

[Mariana]

9. Does the local Army Corps of Engineers

also provide doctors and nurses to staff the moveable storage pods turned into extra rooms?

[BumRushDaShow]

11. When they set up a surge facility here in Philly back during the spring

they actually called up the medical support staff from the National Guard and they have been in the Philly metro area (including assisting the staff at some of the hardest-hit long-term care facilities) with medical personnel.

Pa. National Guard Operation COVID-19 Summary

By Lt. Col. Keith Hickox | July 28, 2020


FORT INDIANTOWN GAP, Pa. —

As of August 12, nearly 150 Pennsylvania National Guard (PNG) members remain activated in supporting the response to COVID-19. At it's peak, there were over 1,500 members activated in support.

Under Gov. Tom Wolf’s proclamation of disaster emergency, signed March 6, the PNG can enter onto state active duty for missions designated by the Pennsylvania Emergency Management Agency. The PNG receives its tasks from PEMA under any state of emergency.

To date, the PNG has assisted in:

returning quarantined cruise ship passengers to their Pennsylvania homes

providing logistical support to the Department of Health

supporting the setup of a FEMA Medical Station in Glen Mills, Delaware County

supporting the setup of a DOH Alternative Care Center in East Stroudsburg, Pa.

transporting cots from Norristown State Hospital to the FEMA Field Hospital

the distribution of 545,000 meals from the Pa. Department of Human Services to dozens of locations across the commonwealth.

supporting the Greater Pittsburgh Community Food Bank - over 94,000 meal kits packed

fatality management support to medical examiners in five southeastern counties

the community testing site in Luzerne County - over 2,300 tests completed

the community testing site in Montgomery County - over 17,000 tests completed

The PNG is currently continuing support to:

long-term nursing and care facilities - To date, over 200 PNG providers, nurses, medics and general purpose service members have assisted over 40 facilities in total with assessments, supplemental staffing and training on PPE and infection control.

mobile testing, where the PNG is sending teams into long-term care facilities identified by Dept. of Health to conduct point prevalence sampling. To date, testing has been conducted in 30 facilities with nearly 11,000 tests completed.

planning with our state partner agencies

The PNG has set up its Joint Operations Center and all five Pennsylvania Task Forces, the same ones used for storms and other state emergencies. The geographic task forces, known as PTF Force North, PTF South and PTF West, provide localized command and control over the PANG units, resources and tasks within their assigned geographic areas. The two functional task forces are known as PTF Aviation and PTF Support.

Members of the PNG live and work in communities throughout Pennsylvania and are following the Pennsylvania Department of Health recommendations to protect their force, families and fellow Pennsylvanians.

The PNG had canceled or went virtual with most of its scheduled training in March, April and May to support mitigation efforts and help protect the force, families and communities. Units that had been preparing to deploy overseas continued that preparation with special measures taken to prevent transmission. In June, many units started returning to their regularly scheduled drills and annual training while implementing mitigation efforts such as social distancing, wearing masks and alternating schedules to reduce the size of groups.

The Pennsylvania National Guard has approximately 1,500 Soldiers and Airmen currently deployed around the world as part of our federal mission.

https://www.pa.ng.mil/Site-Management/News-Article-View/Article/2128076/pa-national-guard-operation-covid-19-update/

One of the problems now is that funding for this (am guessing from the CARES Act) is set to expire at the end of this calendar year - https://whyy.org/articles/pa-army-national-guard-soldiers-in-covid-19-hotspots-are-set-to-lose-federal-funding/

[DeminPennswoods]

17. The complaint was about capacity, not staff

Rural hospitals don't have to be short on space.

[Mariana]

19. "...nurses were working up to 24 extra hours each week."

Meanwhile, a staffing shortage is so severe that the hospital put out an appeal for anyone with healthcare experience, including retirees, to come to work.

You need staff or the space is useless.

[Solly Mack]

2. I joke, make snide comments, even downright mean comments but, honestly,

the level and depth of denial boggles the mind.

It's like they have absolutely no sense of self-preservation. Even if they don't think about others, they should, at least, have some urge to continue their own survival.

Yet they don't.

Opposing beliefs/ideas waging war in them. A conditioned construct of who they are as a person waging war with what they are as a human?

Humans strive to survive.

Yet they don't.

Their denial - the need they have for that denial - seems to be more important to them than actual survival.

SARS-coV-2 might kill them but changing how they believe will kill them? Even if only figuratively. Changing how they believe means they have to change as a person and that's scarier to them than dying from a disease they could help prevent or make less deadly by simply accepting the science?

Are they that far gone?

Conditioning appears to have supplanted what is supposed to be a basic instinct of living organisms.

Survival.

Their denial is scary.

[beachbumbob]

3. their denial was predicable

[Solly Mack]

4. All things considered, it was a safe bet.

Still, damn. How fucked up they are as people. Beyond reason.

[beachbumbob]

5. 30-40 years of propaganda and poor education brings America to this point and believe me, this will

get MUCH worse. Until we have democrats willing to investigate and prosecute under a variety of laws, including treason and sedition and I just don;t see that happening as they wouldn;t even attempt to use all the power they have to enforce simple subpoenas.

[Solly Mack]

6. I think the conditioning has gone on for longer, but yes, really kicked in over last 50 years.

I firmly believe in holding criminal politicians and their minions accountable to the fullest extent of the law.

Some people think it a bigger shame/disgrace to hold a president accountable than a President who removes and (then) loses children from people at the border or even torturing people. Than sedition or insurrection. Plus a host of other crimes and abuses.

That's so not how my shame meter works.

Me? I think it the biggest shame/disgrace to pretend saying "We can do better" (without full accountability/ to include prison time) is somehow a solution.

We can say a lot of feel-good things - it's what we do about those who commit the above crimes that matter.

[tanyev]

12. Yes. I was talking with a like-minded co-worker about the Thanksgiving suicide pact.

She was blaming it all on people's selfishness. I agree there's some selfishness to blame, but there is something else going on. Pure selfishness would be a situation where you are in no danger and don't care about the consequences to other people. Here we have a situation where they care very little about the consequences to other people, but they are also putting themselves in a LOT of danger. What is that? Stupidity? Ignorance? Denial? Stubbornness? It's breath-taking, whatever it is.

[Solly Mack]

15. Probably a combination of all that in some form or another.

Along with how fear works on people, mass hysteria, shared delusions, confirmation bias, defending a person or belief regardless of reason or evidence - because it tracks with their basic beliefs, etc..


It is very disturbing, in my opinion.

[StarlightGold]

22. A HUGE part is their churches.

I've seen this on a few RW sites. The basic premise is "Well if you believed in Jesus like everyone should, then you wouldn't be doing everything in your power to stay alive. You would look forward to being with him".
I am past giving any fucks about people like this. They can drop dead (after suffering a lot).
I do care about the hospital staff who are putting their lives/sanity on the line for this kind of thinking. I know when you're in the medical field you want to help everyone who needs it, but this is SO blatantly reckless. I wouldn't blame them if they harbored a little bitterness.

[tanyev]

23. Hopefully all the medical and essential workers can get vaccinated soon

and it will be very effective. That is the most heartbreaking aspect of all of this.

[smirkymonkey]

26. +1000

I will never understand the mentality of these people. The only explanation is that they have collectively gone insane.

[Solly Mack]

27. Makes them all the more dangerous.

As comical as they can be with their misspelled signs and idiotic pronouncements, their fallback is to lash out with words of hate or acts of violence. All too often both.

And that was before Trump became their god. Now? It's worse.

[Yeehah]

7. Gee, I hope they have Obamacare to help pay their medical bills

Otherwise, they never pay their bills and the hospitals have to write it off.

[hatrack]

8. Between 2010 and 2020, six Missouri hospitals closed, all in rural counties

https://www.beckershospitalreview.com/finance/state-by-state-breakdown-of-120-rural-hospital-closures.html

[Yeehah]

10. This is what republican voters vote for

The failure by republican legislatures to allow expanded Medicaid under the ACA is a crime against the people.

[DeminPennswoods]

18. This is what our for-profit health care system

has wrought and why it needs radical change.

[Wicked Blue]

13. Someone should set up video cameras in the hospitals

and force covidiots to watch the suffering

[Mariana]

14. "Fake news!!!" is all they'll say to that. nt.

[lpbk2713]

16. You can't fix that kind of stupid.

People are dying all around them and they still don't get it.

[lindysalsagal]

20. and after 4 years of klansman, and 10 months of covid, the STILL won't blame the gop

They'll STILL vote against libruls, even though WE brought them healthcare.

We are a horrible species.

[Hermit-The-Prog]

21. I don't know how to break the propaganda bubble and introduce facts.

[kairos12]

25. Tell them to call Jared. He'll handle it.

[Withywindle]

28. This needs to be on TV 24/7

Don't show patient's faces, okay, but honestly, the media is very complicit at this point. Stop showing talking heads in suits and makeup nattering on about horse-race politics a full month after the election, and get reporters out covering this.

Like it or not, we have a huge number of people who don't believe anything is real if they don't see it on TV. STOP PRETENDING LIFE IS NORMAL.

When 9/11 happened, there was nothing else on cable news for at least a week. We now have the equivalent of a 9/11 EVERY DAY in terms of deaths.

Show it.

Part of what helped to end the Vietnam War was gruesome, upsetting imagery on TV. If that's what it takes to get people to take this seriously, DO IT.