Posted on 03/12/2020 1:17:57 PM PDT by Erik Latranyi
Health officials in Italy have issued guidelines for rationing care as hospitals there struggle to keep up with the surge of patients infected with the coronavirus.
Doctors are being told that they'll likely need to deny care to senior citizens and those with other health conditions as the virus explodes across the nation. Italy has been rocked by the still not-well-understood COVID-29, with more than 1,200 confirmed cases and 827 deaths—second only to China—and 16 million residents currently under quarantine.
An article published by the Italian College of Anesthesia, Analgesia, Resuscitation and Intensive Care (translated here by Yascha Mounk) warns that "It may be necessary to establish criteria of access to intensive care not just on the basis of clinical appropriateness but inspired by the most consensual criteria regarding distributive justice and the appropriate allocation of limited health resources." The report goes on to recommend rationing care to certain populations.
(Excerpt) Read more at pjmedia.com ...
Triage station on the lawn of the Pentagon after the 9/11 attack. https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/b/bc/DN-SD-04-12743.JPEG/1280px-DN-SD-04-12743.JPEG
Those who are likely to survive with aid *have* to be prioritized over those likely to die with aid and those who can wait a bit. That is how it is.
On the sinking ship, our society has created the idea of women and children rescued first. Older men usually sacrifice themselves for the safety of all. I expect no different decisions today,
A very liberal government professor in college waxed eloquently that elders should “wander from the tribe, find a tree to lean against, and die” because they have outlived their usefulness. Besides my grandfather (gave me a life NRA membership in my teens and exposed me to Paul Harvey & Rush Limbaugh), I suppose I should thank the glib lib as it exposed me to true evil face of the left.
No, there I will disagree: During battle, least wounded gets treated first so they can get back to the lines. Most severe (and those needing very long lengths of care) are put aside until the others are stabilized and safe.
“Will be”? I am fairly certain that should read “Have been.”
These are not military people who signed up for a war and knew what they were getting into.
Medicare patients are already being denied optimal care in U.S. hospitals because Medicare pays less and denies certain procedures according to people I know who deal with these issues. The hospitals do not want to absorb costs so tough.
That form of triage occurs (historically, for the US) at battalion aid level or below. Those who can be reasonably patched up and sent back out get that - anything more involved gets stabilized as much as possible and sent up to higher medical aid, which is where the more classic form occurs.
Triage also occurs in other contexts not involving medical care or life-threatening scenarios - it occurs or is supposed to occur when you have a host of issues and don’t have enough resources to immediately fix all of them. You have to establish priority somehow.
The fact is, in a socialized hcare system, the state gets to determine who they deem to be disposable, for any reasons they choose. Political. Racial. Your social status. Your job. If they hate men.
Now, during “regular” care the most severely wounded do get treated first, because they “are” life threatened.
US doctors are trained to do the same thing when they have limited resources. Spend some time in an inner-city ER and watch. It happens every day.
“but i think in battle they always treat the sickest first right?”
No, those the worst injured are often given pain relief, nothing more.
You are correct about Triage - except for mass casualties.
If you can only treat two and you have three that need critical care you have to pick which two get treated.
The two that are picked are the ones that have the best chance of survival with the care you can provide.
That’s why the talk now is about how many ICU beds are available vs the peak load of patients.
You don’t have to stop the virus to treat people - you just need to slow the spread of it. That way the same number get sick but not all at the same time.
Never mind that.
Maybe if they stopped treating every COVID like it was death itself, the elderly wouldn’t need to be squeezed out.
Instead we seem to still be behaving as though anyone with sniffles and coughs can’t survive and is doomed without professional help. Thus do they run out of beds for those in most dire circumstances.
And what about all the patients seeking help over something NOT the COVID?
Rather than make excuses, think about the POINT we are making.....the Italian single-payer healthcare system was overwhelmed easily due to shortages of medical staff and facilities.
That is due to socialized medicine.
Stop making excuses.
the bottleneck is the # of acute hospital beds and the # of ventilators. Italy has 2.62 acute hospital beds per 1000 people. We have 2.6 per 1000 and our per capita stats never count illegals, so the real number is going to be way worse.
Even scarier, all of this is coming out of northern Italy which is the most functional part of the country with what are effectively WASP/german/french culture and instiutions. The rest of the country is overrun with southern Italians and migrants and is going to do much worse.
So unless we can get people to stop going outside, coronavirus for us is going to look a lot more like Italy than China.
And not just in inner city ERs...in one of the 10 richest counties in the US, ER has a walk in reception area for registration after which a triage nurse takes vitals and complaint and shuffles patients according to immediate needs....they even call it triage. And that applies to ambulance arrivals as well.
Ex Spurts warn....
I’d guess it’s like 49 now...
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