In reply to kennycan.

Nope. There were plenty of COVID patients around. Nobody had to make any up. They were free for the asking. All we had to do was open our doors. You keep acting like that wasn't a thing. We had 5 beds in the former lobby, and 8 beds in the hallway, FFS. For 6 months straight.

We were about 5 minutes most days from the docs starting to tell anyone over 70 or 75 to just go outside to the giant circus tent to wait to die, because we had no place to put them. It got that close, for weeks on weeks, until new infections finally started to drop. That was around Feb of 2021.

All Uncle paid for, months later, was to fractionally mitigate costs for patients hospitals had to care for regardless.

Hospitals ate a shitburger on those costs, and we're still paying for it. Our equipment got beat to shit, we can't replace it or even repair it. We can't pay competitive salaries, and we lost half our ICU staff and 1/4 of the ER staff (who just said "Fuck it, I'm out!") during COVID at its most hellish, and that's fucking up the rest of the hospital even now.

We're holding patients in the ER, which fucks up the whole county's EMS, because we're stuffed full, and there's a dozen ICU beds with no nurse because our hospital damned near went bankrupt because of the pandemic you think never happened. We can't afford to hire more nurses at rates they'd take, because of the market right now.

When we go down, it's like compartments on the Titanic. The patients we used to get go to the next nearest ED, and overwhelm four other hospitals. Which overwhelms all the other hospitals. Now the whole county is fucked, because we're running at 97-99% capacity most days and times since decades before COVID.

Which pulls down the four neighboring counties as the ripples spread outwards. Now 40M people (no big, right? It's only 10% of the country...) are fucked, indefinitely, because every place they'd go is full to overflowing. Until enough people die, or just stop coming in. Maybe just 6 hours, maybe all week. The ER is finally staffed normally (maybe 5 days out of 7), for the first time since 2019. The ICU is still at about half-staff every night, forever, and it bones us every day.

Everybody in the medical field has been warning people about this for decades, which was why the overload from COVID was always going to be a problem. The deaths because of COVID aren't over, and not just because of the Not-A-Vaxx deaths. People are still dying because of how it fucked up the whole medical system, and it's not getting better, it's getting worse.

And it's worse in states with lower pay, and no staffing ratios, which is every other one than mine.

And everyone can see it who doesn't have their head up their ass.