By John H. Marble
Over the past few months this paper has printed numerous COVID letters and editorials, from all points of the compass. I suppose this simply reflects the generally scattered views of Americans, regardless of the topic. At the risk of using a politically charged word, it appears to me that we are, in fact, a rather diverse lot when it comes to what we believe and how we think.
Many of the recent letters about COVID have involved the use of statistics to support one particular view or another, or, conversely, to rake leaves on some other writer’s view. Generally, not to very great effect, I would say.
Are lots of people getting sick from COVID? It depends on how you view things. Are lots of people dying from COVID? Same answer, I’m afraid. Should we all be radically changing our behaviors or should we do absolutely nothing and just let the damn thing run its course? Vaccines? Masks? Social distancing? Goodness! So many questions and so much data.
I’m fairly convinced that part of our difficulty in understanding each other has to do with what we’ve actually seen and how we think about science, government, data, and all that. Personally, I have had a very modest bit of medical training, but that is by far overshadowed by a 20-year career in public health.
These two fields take a very different approach to looking at problems like the COVID virus. Medical folks tend to focus on the individual, as in, “Are you sick?” Public Health folks, on the other hand, tend to spend their time thinking about the portion of the community that might become sick and the health systems and infrastructure that will be required to deal with that problem.
They tend to ask questions about prevention and capacity, rather than individual cases or symptoms. Based on my experience, I tend to follow the public health school of thinking.
For readers out there who have not made up their minds about just how serious this COVID business is, I would offer the following notes:
The hospitals are filling up.
Let me try that again. Hey! The hospitals are filling up!
And unless you believe that this is some huge conspiracy of folks who are faking their symptoms or just a bunch of belly-aching hypochondriacs, I guess we might conclude that there are an increasing number of hospital-sick folks in America.
This story is worse in some places than others. Strangely painful to me is the news that the tiny hospital in Minot, North Dakota, the very hospital where my mother received her training to become a Registered Nurse, is operating at 100% of capacity. No Intensive Care rooms available. No extra rooms at the ER.
And it’s not just in tiny places like Minot. Albuquerque is somehow reporting that their ICUs are at 103%. Doctors in “hot spots” complain they have nowhere to send overflow patients. And while the troubles in Texas and Pennsylvania may seem remote, try looking up hospital capacity in nearby Idaho. I also read about hospitals beginning to use the concept of triage: Choosing which patients to treat based on their presumed possibility of survival. Pretty scary.
Even closer to home, reports from December show Oregon health facilities beginning to struggle a bit too. Historically, hospitals in our region typically operate at around 65% of capacity. Last week, Oregon Department of Health reports that they are averaging around 85%.
In addition, our nation’s public health experts are warning that the worst of this problem may actually be in front of us. If they happen to be correct, it’s not hard to imagine that the public health infrastructure of this country will be stretched beyond its capacity to function.
Currently, there are still more resources to call on: The National Guard might come and set up Mobile Army Surgical Hospitals to handle the overflow, should the more dire predictions come true. Maybe the United Nations would come help. This is what they do in developing nations, after all.
Sigh.
If you don’t believe that COVID is a serious problem, well, fine. No masks? No social distancing? No hand washing (for goodness sake!)? Not interested in the free COVID testing offered in Albany every Monday and Friday? No vaccine for you, either, right?
I would ask people to be conscious of one thing: the hospitals are filling up. Non-emergency patients are being advised to wait until spring before getting treatment. Patients are being transferred from one hospital to another. Hospital managers are making calls, looking for empty beds.
In the end, it doesn’t matter very much what individual people believe or think about the value of masks or social distancing or any other preventative measures. But collectively, there should be little argument about the outcome of COVID so far.
Clearly, our national health system is facing a tremendous challenge, one that cares not one little bit about politics or philosophy or religion or party. Personally,
I’m not very interested in arguing about statistics: counting the dead, counting the survivors, counting the a-symptomatic. The fact of the matter is that our hospitals are filling up with sick people, people that we have a responsibility to care for.
Unless you don’t actually believe in that idea.
– John H. Marble lives in Crawfordsville, where he farms and serves as a volunteer with the Sweet Home Fire and Ambulance District. He suggests anyone interested in free COVID testing visit http://www.doineedacovid19test.com/Albany_OR_2684.html.