Los Angeles is running out of oxygen for patients as covid hospitalizations hit record highs nationw

[Wicked Blue]

Source: Washington Post

The United States has entered the new year with record numbers of Americans hospitalized with coronavirus, straining a health-care system bracing for a post-holidays surge that has the potential to further stretch hospitals.

At least 128,000 covid-19 patients were hospitalized nationwide as of Monday, eclipsing the record set in the last week of 2020. Facilities across the West and South are especially burdened.

Los Angeles County has been so overwhelmed it is running out of oxygen, with ambulance crews instructed to use oxygen only for their worst-case patients. Crews were told not bring patients to the hospital if they have little hope of survival and to treat and declare such patients dead on the scene to preserve hospital capacity. Several Los Angeles hospitals have turned away ambulance traffic in recent days because they can’t provide the air flow needed to treat patients.



Read more: https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2021/01/05/covid-hospitalizations-los-angeles-oxygen/

---

Why on earth are we not sending oxygen canisters via FEMA, the Red Cross, or the military?

How is it possible that in 2021, in Los Angeles, there is not enough oxygen to treat patients?

[onecaliberal]

1. What the heck is Newsom doing?

[ancianita]

4. Newsome just requested that Navy Hospital Ship US Mercy return from Portland, where it's

dry docked, scheduled for heavy maintenance repairs for the next few months. It left San Diego in May and headed north.

They could probably suspend repairs, but I couldn't find info on that.


I did find that, 31 March 2020, while Mercy was docked in San Diego, a Pacific Harbor Line freight train was deliberately derailed by its onboard engineer in an attempt to crash into the ship, but the attack was unsuccessful.

According to U.S. federal prosecutors, the train's engineer "was suspicious of the Mercy, believing it had an alternate purpose related to COVID-19 or a government takeover". The train came to a stop approximately 750 feet (230 m) from the ship after destroying several barriers and suffered a substantial fuel oil leak requiring cleanup from fire fighters and hazardous materials personnel. No one was injured and the ship was not harmed; the engineer was charged with train wrecking.

[Warpy]

2. I think those things are being done

but even the big tanks of oxygen contain only so much and people on high flow oxygen will deplete them quickly.

LA County is 10+million people. Riverside County has 2,5+ million people. Ventura County has about 850,000. That's about 14 million people when you add it all up, and the virus is spreading quickly. There is no way for hospitals to keep up.

The adjacent states also have large outbreaks, although not as bad as California's.

This was always the worst case scenario, the disease moving into densely populated areas.

[Throck]

3. A hospital near me has liquid oxygen that warms to gas oxygen.

It's piped throughout the hospital.

[Hekate]

6. I was reading yesterday that not only were hospitals not built for a disaster of this magnitude...

...the central gas lines are in many/most cases old and are starting to break down under the strain.

[Wicked Blue]

11. I think that's what the Army Corps of Engineers was called in to fix nt

[Warpy]

7. That is what they're running low on

which is why some people are using tanks. Know also that places like waiting rooms have been turned into wards, and there are no oxygen hookups in those.

I think the space program is going to have to be put on hold for a while. We need that liquid O2 here on earth.

[Throck]

13. They make portable oxygen concentrators for home use.

They separate oxygen from the nitrogen in the air. Used by persons with impaired lung functions. My uncle has used one for about 10 years.

[Warpy]

14. Those are OK for low flow oxygen for things like COPD

We're not talking about low flow oxygen for Covid patients. They need high flow oxygen.

[onecaliberal]

5. The stay at home order is a joke. There is no enforcement. My city looks like there is no pandemic.

A lot of people do not mask, or distance. There is a school district with 50,000 that has face to face school and will not pause even though we have 4 ICU Beds available today. We’ve had zero percent for weeks. There is zero enforcement of any regulations here. It every man for himself. It looks to me like just doing nothing while the hospitals are overrun and A LOT of people die. I hear nothing about the vaccine.

[Warpy]

9. I'm sorry to hear that

Rural counties here in NM were like that but in the city, people seemed to take it seriously. Nothing was open here for either Xmas or NYE so our spikes weren't terrible. We had them, though, and I expect our numbers won't start going back down for a few weeks.

At least ICU staff caught a little breather before Merry Fucking Christmas hit us.

[McCamy Taylor]

8. Scary

[progree]

10. As Covid crisis grows, many California businesses flout the rules

https://www.yahoo.com/news/covid-crisis-grows-many-california-011713926.html

Up and down the coastal boulevards of San Diego County, restaurants are buzzing with commerce as customers in sunglasses enjoy cocktails and bar food al fresco. Sandwich boards placed on sidewalks advertise the services of massage parlors that had been closed for months. Some Southern California gyms are allowing muscle-building indoors. And tribal casinos welcome gamers.

... They're defying stay-at-home rules, recently extended until hospitalizations subside, that ban dining, and nonessential retailers and services.

... In early December, the sheriff's departments in Orange and Riverside counties indicated that stay-at-home enforcement wouldn't be prioritized. In San Diego County, sheriff's deputies accompany health inspectors as they deliver cease-and-desist orders to noncompliant businesses. Los Angeles authorities have cracked down on allegedly illicit party houses.

... it's up to individual cities and counties to enforce the state orders.

... San Diego County health officials reported a record daily number of virus-related deaths Thursday at 62, and at least four people were found to have a more-transmissible variant of Covid-19, known as B.1.1.7, first discovered in the United Kingdom.

Because FREEDOM! CONTSTITUTION!

Bar resistor meme: "My health is my responsibility, not the government's"

No thought of course by the bar resistors to the people in their household, workplace, and community that they might infect.

[JI7]

12. And then they show up in hospitals seeking treatment from those they attacked

[jmowreader]

15. The next problem...

There’s only so much liquid oxygen that can be made at one time. Air liquifier machines can’t run any faster than they already do.

I wonder though...why don’t the biggest hospitals own gas liquification plants? They all use liquid oxygen and liquid nitrogen, you can buy a machine big enough to service a hospital’s needs for about $250,000 (which would make it far from the most expensive machine in the hospital) and they could make a little of their money back by selling their excess nitrogen to Air Liquide.