Posted on 09/23/2009 7:06:56 PM PDT by Dementio
With scant public input, state and federal officials are pushing ahead with plans that -- during a severe flu outbreak -- would deny use of scarce ventilators by some patients to assure they would be available for patients judged to benefit the most from them.
The plans have been drawn up to give doctors specific guidelines for extreme circumstances, and they include procedures under which patients who weren’t improving would be removed from life support with or without permission of their families.
The plans are designed to go into effect if the U.S. were struck by a severe flu pandemic comparable to the 1918 outbreak that killed an estimated 50 million people worldwide. State and federal health officials have concluded that such a pandemic would sicken far more people needing ventilators than could be treated by the available supplies.
(Excerpt) Read more at propublica.org ...
To me it seemed like immunity from a dead virus was safer than immunity from a live virus.
To my parents, polio season was very real and I remember asking my mother to be able to do something (cannot remember what) but she said "NO its polio season". It wasn't a scare** polio was deadly and if you survived many had to live in an iron lung for the rest of their lives...also those children that survived without needing an iron lung ended up crippled...
look what happened w/Katrina
Yep. And in a flu pandemic the same would happen. Too many people need too few resources. People will die. Who?
For the record, I'm not betting the farm on a flu pandemic. It seems like we have "flu pandemic scare" every year. And every year people die from the flu. Life goes on for the rest of us.
10 families and their physicians agree, they want to put the patient on a ventilator. There are 5 ventilators. What's your solution?
In this case people who have a responsibility to plan for the worst case in order to be prepared were reported on by the media. The planners did what they are supposed to do; they planned. The reporters did what they are supposed to; they reported. And I did what I was supposed to do; I considered the situation and said to myself; "sounds like they have that part under control."
I also repressed the urge to set the caps lock and hold down punctuation keys.
Please be more specific. What do you think would be murder?
Doesn't it seem silly for us to argue this after our government has just spent hundreds of billions of dollars on nothing that will benefit the American people? Think of all the good that money could have done, although I was against stealing it from us in the first place.
“With men like Cass Sunstein, John Holdren, and Ezekiel Emanuel advising the affirmative action bastard, is it surprising that the solution to the social security disaster is to not have that many reaching retirement to pay out to?”
I love the fact that now that the baby boomer generation, the very generation that spawned this disaster of a presidency, has come into the twilight of their years, they will be the beneficiaries of this “noble” move. They are the ones who voted for him, let them reap the whirlwind.
Do you think they’ll object?
Here is a little help, I don’t want to be on any damn ventilator...its already written in my will...chalk off this granny....you can have my ventilator...
Uh, imagining the worst case IS how they hype it in order to sell. And why should a flu need to be "sold"? To "protect" people? How? By convincing them to get vaccinated? Is that all? Or is it to convince them to go along with mandatory vaccination even though, as well as the specific legislation that completely indemnifies the vaccine makers for any deaths over a vaccine that contains known poisonous materials prepared with grossly inadequate human testing?
Yeah, I guess it WOULD take a lot of media hype, as well as calm, cool people saying "no problem, move along," to try to force the country into that level of suicide.
But can be efficacious against secondary bacterial infections, which commonly accompany influenza, especially with deep respiratory involvement. Unfortunately, do nothing for the cytokine storm, if it occurs.
Antibiotics will help with secondary infections of course. But they do nothing to stop the cytokine storms and inflammatory casades which were the major cause of death in 1918 and are killing some, but very few, young people in this pandemic. Anti-virals are somewhat effective but must be taken before or at the time one is infected to be of much use.
The problem would be, should another 1918 strike, the delivery of care. Supply chains snake around the world. There are barely enough mechanical ventilators for a normal flu season. Something big hit and hospitals will be swamped. Already happened in the Southern hemisphere with this flu.
People die if the flu and complications of it every year.....
As they do from skin cancer, falling in the bath tub and heart attacks. Not exactly a reason to shrug it off, is it? This flu is very different. It is hitting younger people and it is killing them.
we’ll have to do this l8r... it’s a bit l8 here
Age (straw man number 2) is just one of the factors in what would be a brutal decision to have to make, but it would still have to be made.
i.e., you may chose the the young adult female/male - who never contribute anything of worth to society - may even be a negative. You may chose death for an elderly person who still has a lot to contribute - or a toddler who would have grown up to contribute something of great worth.
All true. What is your point, that it is impossible to predict the future with certainty? Whoa! So one does what, exactly, nothing? Two people need a ventilator to live and only one machine is available. YOU tell us the rules for how to decide. First come first served? Available cash? Age? Relationship to Beethoven? What? Seize that moral high ground and fill us in.
I was in Las Vegas when the MGM was on fire.(myself and several of my girlfriends went there for the week end) We were staying at the Aladdin just behind the MGM..volunteered because I was a nurse, worked in front of the hotel with a para medic...Some were sent in ambulance to hospital, some were sent with a volunteer to assist them up to the corner (Barbary Coast Casino) I think. The dead were left in the building until all the fire was out and their bodies were removed from the roof via helicopter...
The whole afternoon was surreal like it really wasn't happening, but it was...
It took quite a while but finally the military helicopters arrived and lifted those that made it to the roof off and set them down in a large open area behind the MGM. I think the helicopters were called Stallions (but I could be wrong) 3 people jumped from the 24th floor down onto the street. Others were using sheets to climb down and the ladder trucks could only make it to the 9th floor of a 25 floor building...After that fire all the rules for fire safety were changed for Las Vegas....
Life and death decisions are made everyday, its just not the damn governments business making them...
PS The power of those birds to lift water off the street from 25 stories up and slam ambulance doors if you didn't use all your weight to keep them open was awesome..The front of that casino did look like a war zone, fire engines, ambulance's screaming in and out people yelling and lots of people just standing in shock. Many that were able to walk out were dazed, but we did have to ask lots of medical questions like what meds are you on. Did you take your heart pills this morning etc....organized chaos
Wow! Crazy story. Thanks for sharing.
PS The power of those birds to lift water off the street from 25 stories up and slam ambulance doors if you didn't use all your weight to keep them open was awesome.
Yeah, I've been on the decks of carriers when Sea Stallions (CH-53s) land and depart. Better take cover and find something to hold on to! That's no kidding.
Actually, it began when the concept of “self-evident” right and wrong was seriously denied. The utilitarian “ethicists” regularly discuss how many of our rights can be infringed upon in times of crises.
However, I can remember concern about the Executive Orders under Clinton that would have allowed Martial Law and FEMA’s control of medical personnel and just about everything else.
Our problem will be that the Patriot Act *was* signed by President Bush and he will be blamed for our problems.
The sky is not falling.....
If the vaccine was the topic, I wonder why you would advise everyone to take a valium, since that is something to actually be concerned about.
Obama failed to prepare this country adequately for the swine flu epidemic which was thoroughly publicized and totally anticipated by everyone except the superhero president, his dancing boy chief of staff, and all the other democrat, socialist and communist odds and sods he relies on for aid and comfort. Bush was castigated continuously for the New Orleans situation which came with little advance notice. Why shouldn’t Obama be impeached if there is a swine flu pandemic which could have been averted if any of the many advance notices had been heeded. I’m sure Obama, his wife and kids, his live-in mother-in-law, his dancing boy, his czars and czarinas, and all of his political nearest and dearest will get the H1N1 vaccine that half of the citizens won’t be able to get because of governmental incompetence. Well, Barry, do you wonder why we don’t want to trust the health care system to the government. The government is a pimple on the ass of progress on its best day, and a cancer more of the time.
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