I have always said that you’ll know the pandemic has started when you go to the hospital and find tents set up in the parking lots and cars lined up on the street for blocks, waiting desperately to get in.
This story ran today on Kvue a TV station in Austin, Tx:
Tents set up outside Dell Children’s for flu cases
Watch the video showing the tents and how they are set up and are being used. This is the 5th Hospital I have heard that has put tents up in their parking lots in the past week.
I am also hearing stories of Hospital ERs and ICU’s overflowing with the increase of H1N1 patients throughout the South East. Also reports of health care running out of supplies are just beginning. The orders for face masks and other protective equipment is rising to an unsupportable level.
These are all indicators of the second wave of H1N1 beginning. Yet people still say to me “don’t worry, it’s mild”.
What we are seeing in the hospital parking lots may end up being like sprinkling water on a house fire with your fingers. The tents in Austin hold from 8 to 16 additional people each. What are they going to do in 2 weeks when hundreds if not thousands a day seek help? How many of them will be desperately ill in need of ICU care? How many will be told “no more room”, told to go home only to suffer and die?
How many people who suffer a heart attack will die, when under normal conditions they would be rushed to the hospital and put on a ventilator in ICU and survive?
How many stroke or accident victims will be left to fend for themselves? How many kids with asthma who can’t catch a breath?
The other day I called my Union to ask a simple question. The phone rang and rang, and when a young man answered, he was breathless and obviously too busy to answer the phone. Where was everyone else? The phone has always been answered quickly. You could say its the economy and downsizing, or a coincidence of overlapping vacations or lunch breaks… it happens. But when it happens in every company at the same time, try to get something done. Your suppliers will be out, as well as your clients and co-workers. Things will grind to a halt for a while.
What about the critical infrastructure workers, the people that keep the lights on, or the truckers who put food in the stores or the farm hands who tend the fields. What happens when they are sick in large numbers all at the same time?
So, I should stop worrying because H1N1 is mild and “so, people will get sick and some will die, oh well, that’s life” right?
Remember to tell me that when you call your doctor because you are sick and he doesn’t answer, or go to the store and find it closed, or have your house catch fire and no firetrucks show up.
Watching them put up those tents in the Hospital parking lots is really interesting and it’s great that they can handle the extra patient load.
So I ask again, what is it about 100 million sick people that you don’t get?
