Posted on 04/04/2020 10:57:32 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
When USNS Comfort sailed into the New York Harbor on Monday, expectations run high, particularly among hospital doctors and personnel. Throngs of New Yorkers rushed to Manhattan’s west side to see a symbol of hope in all its glory dock at Pier 90 in Manhattan. Today, the huge white vessel remains almost empty, with only 20 patients being accommodated in a floating hospital that can handle 1,000 patients.
he Comfort is supposed to relieve the pressure on New York hospitals by taking in patients with non-coronavirus ailments. This will help hospital officials and personnel in New York City to focus most of their attention to COVID-19 patients.
President Trump himself traveled to Norfolk, Virginia, to personally give the ship an official send-off as it sailed for New York. The President, at that time, said that the Navy’s hospital would play a crucial role in the fight against the deadly pandemic. As the ship entered the city’s harbor on Monday, it was considered among the few hopeful moments in a city being consumed with despair.
On Thursday, the expectations seem far from reality as the enormous white vessel remained mostly empty, with its 1,200 crew members mostly idle. The situation has caused a great deal of frustration from local hospital executives, prompting one of them to exclaim, “It’s a joke.”
Reports indicated that only 20 patients had been accommodated by the ship. This is despite the fact that hospitals in New York right now have been struggling to find space for thousands of COVID-19 patients. It is the same story in Los Angeles where the USNS Mercy, another Navy hospital ship, has only 15 patients onboard.
According to reports, a host of bureaucratic hurdles and military protocols is preventing the Comfort from receiving many patients. Aside from its stringent rules about not letting COVID-19 patients come on board, the Navy also refuses to treat several other medical conditions. Navy guidelines provided to New York hospitals include a list of 49 other medical problems that would disqualify a patient from being admitted to the ship.
The Navy also requires that patients must first be taken by an ambulance to a city hospital for evaluation, which included being tested for COVID-19. After which, if they qualify, patients are then going to be picked up again and transported to the ship.
During a morning briefing that took place on Thursday, officials reveal only three patients have been transferred to the Navy hospital ship. After the New York Times published a report showing the dismal number, a Navy spokeswoman, Elizabeth Baker, said that number has increased to 20 late in the day.
She also said that the Navy is doing all it can to bring patients aboard in a quick manner. Despite all these assurances, however, hospital officials feel they are incurring a lot of delays and say they are getting exasperated. According to Michael Dowling, “Everyone can say, ‘Thank you for putting up these wonderful places and opening up these cavernous halls.’ But we’re in a crisis here, we’re in a battlefield.” Dowling is the head of Northwell Health, the largest hospital system in New York.
As per Mr. Dowling, they had to retrofit any unused space, which includes their conference rooms and lobbies, then turn them into usable hospital wards. His hospital currently takes care of 2,800 coronavirus patients, with 25% of them in serious conditions in ICU. Mr. Dowling's hospital is just one among the many New York hospitals, which are already overwhelmed by the number of patients.
I keep hearing about hospitals struggling, but have yet to see anything that supports this claim.
OANN is reporting that in NY they “Accidentally” sent some coronavirus patients on that ship, which already had a few patients who were being treated for non coronavirus ailments, so good job NY, once again showing your incompetence
Give them the gd malaria cocktail.
The USS Comfort was brought to NYC to deal with the non-COVID19 trauma patients that normally fill the NYC city ER/ICUs on any given day. Given the stay-at-home orders a lot of the normal crime in the city has slowed down. Hence it appears for the moment that it is unnecessary. However, we still have four weeks left of this stay-at-home. My guess is that once the peak is over, or people don’t feel as scared as they did at first, the gun violence and other crime is going to tick up. Let’s see if the USS Comfort stays empty throughout the duration before we draw any conclusions.
Same DNC boilerplate, different day.
Partisan Media Shills update.
ok to not transferring COVID-19 - but what are the other exceptions? Is this bureaucracy (on the part of hospitals or the Navy)? or is something else going on
Cuomo’s got the National Guard out, confiscating ventilators from other hospitals in the State. But has anybody asked if he’s even dipped into the stash he admitted he had for the “apex.” Today I read he accepted 1,000 ventilators from China. Good luck with that.
Sorry...don’t believe it
AND there goes faithful gloom and doom FAUX NEWS again scaring the crap out of Americans this early afternoon..THEY NEVER EVER STOP! ..do they?! Click!
Whoever it is writing these articles everyday needs a “Woodline Attitude Adjustment”.
No graft or skimming off the top if the patient goes to a Navy ship.
heard just now soem virus infected patients are on therwe right now- not suppsoed to be as it’s not set up for that supposedly
Strange, as Cuomo cut the # of hospital beds in NYC by 20k over the last decade and change. Oops.
That wouldn’t even surprise me ;/
Grim New Rules for NYC Paramedics: Don’t Bring Cardiac Arrests to ER for Revival https://www.nbcnewyork.com/news/coronavirus/grim-new-rules-for-nyc-paramedics-dont-bring-cardiac-arrests-to-er-for-revival/2356265/
People have been gaslighted into believing the hospitals are overrun with the dead and dying from CORONA-19. The US Navy hospital ships Mercy and Comfort each have 1,000 beds and only 80 beds for intensive care and have been sent to help with the “overloaded hospital system”, as reported by the government and the media.
However, that’s a complete lie.
New York State has 3,000 intensive care beds, 18 times that of both ships combined. New York State also has 73,931 hospital beds in total, or 36 times both ships combined.
In the US, there are 6,146 hospitals with 924,107 hospital beds with 97,776 intensive care beds. The gaslighting of Americans is that two ships of 2,000 beds total and only 160 intensive care beds is absolutely necessary to a hospital system with 462 times the number of beds and 611 times the number of intensive care beds because somehow the virus is overloading the hospital system.
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