She broke the foot several days ago and was transported to the hospital. They wanted to get her into surgery but delayed because of possible incoming covid cases and sent her home.
Two days later she's been sitting in the same chair at home because she can't walk, and her hygiene is uncared for. An ambulance was called again today but when they arrived the medics told them that the hospital wasn't admitting anything but 'emergency' patients, and apparently a 92 year old woman with a broken foot stewing in her own juice in a living room chair isn't an emergency.
This is a motherfucking crime, and neither the government nor the health care system gives one shit about it. I'm boiling with hatred for every one of these thugs.
Signs point to yes. Maybe a few hospitals are legitimately overloaded (including your local hospital), but most are **PROVABLY ** not overwhelmed. My local hospital - which has 410 beds - had a total of 6 virus cases as of yesterday.
Looking up data for my whole state (NY), the numbers are as follows:
Total hospitalized: 1162 Total ICU: 239
Across a state with nearly 20 million people, 1100 cases and 200 ICU beds isn't going to overwhelm anyone or anything. NYC on its own has about half of that (527 hospitalized, 107 ICU), and even that is a drop in the bucket. See, for example, this PDF from a few years back (intentionally grabbing something before the virus to exclude any arguments about surge capacity being added/removed) which says "The city has 62 active hospitals, with a combined capacity of 26,451 beds."
And, looking at the CDC data, even in HHS region 4 (which has the highest number of per-capita hospitalizations), there's still only 5.44 hospitalizations per 100,000 people (and nationwide it is 2.54 hospitalizations per 100,000). Again, local clusters may make one or two hospitals get overwhelmed but if you can't have 6 people hospitalized for every 100,000 in the country there's much larger problems.