Oregon is calling up the national guard.

[DURHAM D]

https://www.opb.org/article/2021/08/13/oregon-covid-19-cases-governor-kate-brown-national-guard-delta-variant/


Oregon National Guard troops to help hospitals struggling with COVID patients

Oregon Gov. Kate Brown announced on Friday that she would be sending up to 1,500 Oregon National Guard troops to help hospitals deal with the surge in delta variant COVID-19 cases.

“I cannot emphasize enough the seriousness of this crisis for all Oregonians, especially those needing emergency and intensive care,” she said.

“When our hospitals are full with COVID-19 patients, there may not be room for someone needing care after a car crash, a heart attack, or other emergency situation.”

[wyn borkins]

1. A Serious Crisis For Everyone

I understand the need as well as the desire to be helpful; however, the National Guard are simply 'your (and my) neighbors' and I wonder how and if they will be able to care for the sick as well as for the dying. It seems what we do in this country, we call upon the National Guard for any and all emergencies, whether they can provide assistance or not...it's what we do. Now maybe if more than a few of these folks entering the emergency rooms due to COVID-19 had been vaccinated...

[Grasswire2]

2. from the article

"Beginning August 20, an initial 500 Guard members will be deployed to hospitals around the state to provide logistical support as materials handlers and equipment runners, as well as assisting with COVID-19 testing and other hospital operations."

I suspect they will be doing other tasks as well. Setting up tents in parking lots for Covid testing and perhaps for sleeping space for health care workers.

[Maru Kitteh]

3. Several of my fellow nurses are or were Guard or other military. nt

[MissB]

4. The national guard has a medical unit

I have a good friend (who has since moved away from Oregon) that used to be a part of the medical unit. They’d mobilize several hundred each year for their annual exercises- and they’d set things up as if they were responding to a large event that needed a medical component.

The large vaccination clinics set up in Portland and Salem were run by the guard. There is a med unit based down jn Salem too- so one in the Portland area and one in Salem.

Note that my friend wasn’t a doctor or nurse- they have a public health background but didn’t work in a medical setting. So they’re not pulling all of the guard members from the ranks of medical personnel.

[Srkdqltr]

5. We need M.A.S.H. units who can deploy from hot spot to hot spot wherever needed.

[usaf-vet]

6. I have posted this rant many times before but here goes yet again.

WE HAD WHAT YOU SUGGESTED WE NEED

I have posted this rant many times before but here goes yet again.

In the mid-1960 I was a USAF Medic. At that time the military had mobile 150-bed hospitals that could be move in a 24 hour response time.

The hospital was entirely self-contained in that it had everything from A to Z that you would find in a mortar and brick facility. To name a few that you might not expect. It had animal care facilities (veterinarians), public health experts, dental facilities, its own power plant, water purification facilities, labs, medical wards, surgical ward, Ob-Gyn wards, operating rooms, pharmacy, and yes enough doctors, nurses, medics, and other staff to set up and be running in 24 hours or less.

The hospital was airmobile and could be flown anywhere it was needed. In fact, the hospital I was assigned to it was on the ground in March 1964 for the 9.2 earthquakes that hit Alaska https://tinyurl.com/ydn4w344

The mobile hospital was set up at least once a year to 1. check for outdated materials (meds), 2. check for damaged equipment and 3. in our case we set our hospital up in the summer so that air national guard medics could get experience with the mobile hospital.

As near as I can tell all of those hospitals were disband sometime in the 1970s. I never could understand why EXCEPT they downsized the military medical corp and converted to TriCare. You can't tell civilians to pack your bags and go TDY to a natural disaster and might be gone for days, weeks or, months.

In my mind, it was a short-sighted decision to PRIVATIZE a government-provided service.
And that march AND MENTALITY IS STILL PUSHING FORWARD. Just look at the current move to privatize the U.S. Postal services.

[I_UndergroundPanther]

7. This☝️

Privatization is bullshit.
Often making public stuff private makes good things we all need cost too much or fall apart.

Profit has to take back seat to the general welfare of the people.

[calimary]

14. It's not only "privatization." It's "PIRATIZATION."

As in - make way for the PIRATES.

[I_UndergroundPanther]

20. Agree with you piratization.

Republican party and those supporting it need to get thier tentacles out of our govt.
And we need to amputate the gop psychopath party out of the body politic asap.

[James48]

8. Still had them in the 1980's.

Visited a “MUST”- Medical Unit Self-contained Transportable unit. Staff was mostly Army Reserve, I think. Spent a few days in the field with them. That was a year or two before Desert Storm.

[usaf-vet]

11. I don't doubt they geared up for M.A.S.H units to head to middle east.

The USAF mobile hospitals were just that Air Mobile And most often deployed within the Continental U.S. for natural disasters.

To my knowledge, none were deployed to Katrina and other national disasters we have had. For sure, there are not enough USAF medics to man the mobile hospitals since TriCare. In 1966-67 my medical unit opened a new brick-and-mortar hospital on an airbase in the south.

I returned to that base when I attended an Army boot camp graduation in Columbia, SC. The hospital was converted to a clinic with many of the services no longer provided by military medics but rather civilian TriCare employees.

[GemState]

17. In the early to mid '70s I was assigned to

the 363rd Air Transportable Hosp at Shaw AFB in SC. It was stored in a small hangar ready to be loaded aboard a transport aircraft. Twice a year it went into the field to test it’s readiness for mobilization. It had deployed to an earthquake in Nicaragua before my time with it. In it’s tents were med/surg wards, operating room, dental clinic, radiology, laboratory. After it was delivered to a site on it’s palats and the engineers cleared the ground, it could be up and running after about 12 hrs of back-breaking work.

[Srkdqltr]

9. I know. Don't yell at me. I didn't get rid of them. I just thought we needed them back.

Actually it was because the hospital ship could not be deployed to Mississippi because it's hurricane season.

[IronLionZion]

10. How long would it take to bring some of that back?

We've been in pandemic for a year and half now and should be on mobile war footing to manage it by now. There must be spare personnel and equipment and transport vehicles available. Also, there are bases everywhere.

[usaf-vet]

13. Good questions at 74 I don't have those answers. But I will say DON"T let them PRIVATIZE the USPS...

.... and other government-provided (i.e. Social Security and Medicare) services.

IMHO ONCE gone they will never be brought back.

[James48]

16. Probably at least two years.

We don’t have the school capacity to gear it up,

It would have to be designed, then trained, then staffed. Easily 2 years if you had an unlimited budget today, plus you’d have to get equipment purchased and delivered, and people trained to operate it.

[greenjar_01]

12. Thought this was going to be about 1930s Germany style street fights on streets of Portland

Oooooofaaah.

[Captain Zero]

15. Maybe I shouldn't visit Oregon in mid-October?

Had been planning on that time frame but nothing definite.

[Klaralven]

18. Their daily new cases previously peaked at 1534 on December 5; they are now at 1652 for 7-day averag

https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/usa/oregon/

[Klaralven]

19. States with daily new cases exceeding last winter's peak

Florida, Louisiana, Mississippi, Oregon and Hawaii

There are lots of states where the daily new cases exceed 1/3 of last winter's peak and increasing rapidly.