"We don't have a darker color," said Darryl Elmouchi, president of Spectrum Health West Michigan. "So if we're red now, what are we in two weeks?" ...
Spectrum reported more than 370 people hospitalized with covid last week. The system has converted floors and tripled its intensive care unit space, yet there are still patients waiting for beds. Conference space and shared workspaces have been identified for conversion if the surge continues as expected. Elmouchi described the situation as "almost unmanageable."
More.
The third graph shows 16% of Michigan hospital beds occupied by COVID patients right now.
Who's in the other 84%?
The way you manage a real emergency is to stop filling beds with people getting elective procedures. That they aren't doing this in general tells you they are exaggerating.
COVID patients don't make the hospitals any money. That's the real reason they are complaining. The COVID pandemic cuts into the hospitals' bottom line.
You should see the outpatient eye surgery operation at Grand Rapids Ophthalmology lately. They herd them in and out like cattle, performing cataract surgeries like crazy. The pandemic isn't stopping them one bit.
They've had plenty of time to prepare for this inevitable seasonal wave, but instead they placed their faith in a vaccine which didn't stop the spread. Big Pharma, Big Healthcare, and Big Fauci make suckers of us all:
At this point in the pandemic, months after the shots became widely available, the state's health-care workers expected to see occasional ebbs and flows in case numbers. But not at this level.
"I think all of us had hoped that with relatively reasonable vaccination rates - and a year-plus under our belt - we would not get another surge like this," Elmouchi said.
