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after reopening 3 weeks ago, ICU beds at capacity in Montgomery, Alabama

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Digger

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The state closed down at the beginning of April and opened back up at the end of April. And now they've run out of ICU beds.

With just one ICU bed available, Montgomery, Alabama, is sending sick patients to Birmingham - CNN



Alabama Gov. Kay Ivey's stay-at-home order didn't go into effect until April 4, and expired at the end of that month. Ivey replaced it with an order that eased restrictions.

As of May 11, restaurants and bars were allowed to serve customers on site, gyms and athletic facilities, hair and nail salons and barber shops were allowed to open. Groups of any size are allowed, as long as the 6 feet distance guidance is followed.

Ivey announced more reopenings that go into effect Friday, including entertainment venues, childcare facilities and summer camps.
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Montgomery Mayor Steven Reed said on Wednesday that of the four regional hospitals, one is short three ICU beds, two have no ICU beds, and one has just one bed. "Right now, if you are from Montgomery, and you need an ICU bed, you are in trouble," Reed said at a press conference. "If you're from central Alabama, and you need an ICU bed, you may not be able to get one." The health care system in the state's capital is "maxed out," Reed said.
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AmNat said:
We've gone through much worse diseases without normal life coming to a halt. Hopefully Alabama does not return to its prior state of panic.
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What worse diseases did we go through with less deaths and no protective measures?

If the virus is allowed to flourish and the hospitals are overwhelmed, many more people will die than otherwise.
 
RabidAlpaca said:
What worse diseases did we go through with less deaths and no protective measures?
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The Black Death was hundreds of times more lethal than the coronavirus, and did not result in enforced shutdowns of social and economic life.

The Spanish Flu was several times deadlier than the coronavirus, and the enforced shutdowns it provoked were nowhere close to current ones in either scope or uniformity. Though they were also out of proportion by historical standards.

If the virus is allowed to flourish and the hospitals are overwhelmed, many more people will die than otherwise.
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All people die. Even if your doomsday predictions are true (despite not being empirically validated), enforced closures of everything are not justified.
 
AmNat said:
The Black Death was hundreds of times more lethal than the coronavirus, and did not result in enforced shutdowns of social and economic life.
The Spanish Flu was several times deadlier than the coronavirus, and the enforced shutdowns it provoked were nowhere close to current ones in either scope or uniformity. Though they were also out of proportion by historical standards.
All people die. Even if your doomsday predictions are true (despite not being empirically validated), enforced closures of everything are not justified.
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The Spanish Flu killed 50 million people, and the Black Death about 25 million people. That's what you want for us? You look at 100k American deaths and you say:

356548710f3f59337f3bfca0f6ec41d8.jpeg


Why would you want tens of millions of people to die? Should those not be tales of caution?
 
RabidAlpaca said:
The Spanish Flu killed 50 million people, and the Black Death about 25 million people. That's what you want for us? You look at 100k American deaths and you say:

356548710f3f59337f3bfca0f6ec41d8.jpeg


Why would you want tens of millions of people to die? Should those not be tales of caution?
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The Spanish Flu killed around 3% of the world population, and around .5% of the US population. The Black Death killed a third to a half of the population in most places. The coronavirus may have a population wide mortality of .1%.

These aren't "tales of caution". Disease is part of human life. It sucks, but it doesn't justify putting everything on hold. Our ancestors understood this even when facing much deadlier illnesses.
 
AmNat said:
The Spanish Flu killed around 3% of the world population, and around .5% of the US population. The Black Death killed a third to a half of the population in most places. The coronavirus may have a population wide mortality of .1%.These aren't "tales of caution". Disease is part of human life. It sucks, but it doesn't justify putting everything on hold. Our ancestors understood this even when facing much deadlier illnesses.
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I think you pointing out the things we did in pandemics where we lost 10's of millions of people isn't making the statement you think it does. Why would you want to emulate that?

"Look at the Spanish Flu, they didn't do quarantine and they only lost 50 million people! Checkmate, libruls!!"
 
AmNat said:
The Black Death was hundreds of times more lethal than the coronavirus, and did not result in enforced shutdowns of social and economic life.

The Spanish Flu was several times deadlier than the coronavirus, and the enforced shutdowns it provoked were nowhere close to current ones in either scope or uniformity. Though they were also out of proportion by historical standards.



All people die. Even if your doomsday predictions are true (despite not being empirically validated), enforced closures of everything are not justified.
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So what you are saying is that we should revert to the scientific knowledge of the 14th century and early 1900s?
 
RabidAlpaca said:
I think you pointing out the things we did in pandemics where we lost 10's of millions of people isn't making the statement you think it does.
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You are still missing the point. Every one of us will die, and many of us will die in unpleasant ways. Two thirds of the European population survived the Black Death, but they are all gone now. 99.5% of the US population survived the Spanish Flu, all but a handful are gone now. Likewise, everyone who survives Covid will be gone someday.
 
AmNat said:
You are still missing the point. Every one of us will die, and many of us will die in unpleasant ways. Two thirds of the European population survived the Black Death, but they are all gone now. 99.5% of the US population survived the Spanish Flu, all but a handful are gone now. Likewise, everyone who survives Covid will be gone someday.
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This is wildly sociopathic. You're saying that even if it meant tens of millions of Americans dying, we should do it because that's how we did it in the past. Please seek help.

FYI, if Trump had taken the virus seriously early on like most other countries, we wouldn't have to have shut down as long as we did.
 
Digger said:
Really? Which ones?
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AmNat said:
The Black Death was hundreds of times more lethal than the coronavirus, and did not result in enforced shutdowns of social and economic life.

The Spanish Flu was several times deadlier than the coronavirus, and the enforced shutdowns it provoked were nowhere close to current ones in either scope or uniformity. Though they were also out of proportion by historical standards.
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...

Airyaman said:
So what you are saying is that we should revert to the scientific knowledge of the 14th century and early 1900s?
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Your interpretive reading skills are really showing here.
 
RabidAlpaca said:
This is wildly sociopathic. You're saying that even if it meant tens of millions of Americans dying, we should do it because that's how we did it in the past. Please seek help.

FYI, if Trump had taken the virus seriously early on like most other countries, we wouldn't have to have shut down as long as we did.
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I'm not saying we should live normal lives because our ancestors did. I'm saying that we should live normal lives because that's the sane thing to do. Our ancestors' simply evidenced that by their behavior.
 
AmNat said:
We've gone through much worse diseases without normal life coming to a halt. Hopefully Alabama does not return to its prior state of panic.
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With ICU beds at full capacity, it is already past the time to be worried. Oblivious to the danger of Covid-19, the citizens of this sovereign state are in big trouble.
 
It seems that the state has a very low number of ICU beds!


Where are Alabama’s hospital beds?

Where are Alabama’s hospital beds? - al.com

There are nearly 15,000 hospital beds in Alabama, but they aren’t evenly distributed across the state. Several parts of the state, especially rural areas, don’t have any hospitals at all, and others have a relatively small number of beds compared to their populations.

As AL.com’s Anna Claire Vollers reported earlier this week, 75% of Alabama’s 14,790 hospital beds are full on any given day. Any surge caused by the coronavirus could easily overwhelm the healthcare system.

The number of beds in intensive care units here is even smaller. There are just fewer than 1,700 ICU beds in Alabama, and a lot of counties don’t have any.

There are 22 counties with no ICU beds at all, and 44 counties have fewer than two ICU beds per 10,000 people.

Jefferson County has the most ICU beds at 526, and the most per capita at 8 beds per 10,000 people. Mobile, Madison and Tuscaloosa are the only other counties with more than 100 ICU beds.
 
AmNat said:
The Black Death was hundreds of times more lethal than the coronavirus, and did not result in enforced shutdowns of social and economic life.

The Spanish Flu was several times deadlier than the coronavirus, and the enforced shutdowns it provoked were nowhere close to current ones in either scope or uniformity. Though they were also out of proportion by historical standards.



All people die. Even if your doomsday predictions are true (despite not being empirically validated), enforced closures of everything are not justified.
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That is so very not true. Wow.

Bubonic plague: the first pandemic | Science Museum

"Many of the public health measures that we would recognize today first emerged during the Black Death."

"Medical inspections. A plague doctor would come to inspect suspected cases of plague and isolate the infected and their families in their homes."

"The medical authorities of the day had little to offer. 'Leave quickly, go far and come back slowly' was the general advice about what to do if an epidemic came to your town."

"Many people left the city, causing a significant drop in the population. Many in the infected area were mill workers and the epidemic effectively brought the textile industry to a halt."

"colonial authorities instituted an aggressive programme of anti-plague measures, including house searches for victims, enforced evacuation of residents in infected areas, detention camps for travellers and the exclusion of traditional medicine practitioners from infected areas."

Lessons from the History of Quarantine, from Plague to Influenza A

"some city-states prevented strangers from entering their cities, particularly, merchants"

"Implementation of these measures required rapid, firm action by authorities, including prompt mobilization of repressive police forces."

"A rigid separation between healthy and infected persons was initially accomplished through the use of makeshift camps"

"A sanitary cordon—not to be broken on pain of death—was imposed by armed guards along transit routes and at access points to cities."
 
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Digger said:
That is so very not true. Wow.

Bubonic plague: the first pandemic | Science Museum

"Many of the public health measures that we would recognize today first emerged during the Black Death."

"Medical inspections. A plague doctor would come to inspect suspected cases of plague and isolate the infected and their families in their homes."

"The medical authorities of the day had little to offer. 'Leave quickly, go far and come back slowly' was the general advice about what to do if an epidemic came to your town."

"Many people left the city, causing a significant drop in the population. Many in the infected area were mill workers and the epidemic effectively brought the textile industry to a halt."

"colonial authorities instituted an aggressive programme of anti-plague measures, including house searches for victims, enforced evacuation of residents in infected areas, detention camps for travellers and the exclusion of traditional medicine practitioners from infected areas."
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All of the public health measures you've cited were means of quarantining the sick or foreigners (or infected rodents, in the case of British India's enforced evacuations). They didn't impose quarantine on everyone indiscriminately.
 
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AmNat said:
...



Your interpretive reading skills are really showing here.
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Are they? Perhaps yours are. We know much more about how viruses and other contagions spread in the 21st century, they did not know in the 14th century and early 1900s. Had they had such knowledge, how do you know they would not have taken similar measures to prevent the spread?
 
AmNat said:
All of the public health measures you've cited were means of quarantining the sick (or infected rodents, in the case of British India's enforced evacuations). They didn't impose quarantine on everyone indiscriminately.
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Enforced evacuation of entire areas. Sounds pretty disruptive. The fact is they did what they had to do to prevent the plague from spreading. Anything they could think of they did. Of course they did. They didn't disrupt the economy to deal with the Black Death. Dur. What the hell are you talking about?
 
Airyaman said:
Are they? Perhaps yours are. We know much more about how viruses and other contagions spread in the 21st century, they did not know in the 14th century and early 1900s. Had they had such knowledge, how do you know they would not have taken similar measures to prevent the spread?
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We know much more of the technical aspects of disease transmission, and much less of common sense.

In any case, they did know the most pertinent fact about contagious disease, which is that you can get it from being around an infected person. In spite of that, they never thought to treat their entire populations as infected and isolate all of them.
 
Digger said:
Enforced evacuation of entire areas. Sounds pretty disruptive. The fact is they did what they had to do to prevent the plague from spreading. Anything they could think of they did. Of course they did. They didn't disrupt the economy to deal with the Black Death. Dur. What the hell are you talking about?
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I'm not familiar with the details of Britain's policy in India during the Hong Kong Plague. Note that the post you originally replied to did not mention it.

Though it is worth pointing out that that plague was far deadlier than coronavirus, and evacuation could (at least in theory) improve things without requiring indefinite repetition.
 
AmNat said:
We know much more of the technical aspects of disease transmission, and much less of common sense.

In any case, they did know the most pertinent fact about contagious disease, which is that you can get it from being around an infected person. In spite of that, they never thought to treat their entire populations as infected and isolate all of them.
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And? In those days, thousands of people were killed or hurt at their jobs, but over time that changed. Ever stop to wonder why?
 
AmNat said:
I'm not familiar with the details of Britain's policy in India during the Hong Kong Plague. Note that the post you originally replied to did not mention it.

Though it is worth pointing out that that plague was far deadlier than coronavirus, and evacuation could (at least in theory) improve things without requiring indefinite repetition.
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Yeah, you clearly aren't familiar with the details of the thing you made the outrageous claim about. By the 19th century people had figured out a thing or two about preventing the spread of pandemics. You do a lot more than just quarantine sick people. I mean, for centuries they had sanitary cordons where entire cities would be shut down to all commerce and anyone trying to get in would be shot by soldiers. But they also had to figure out how to deal with plague inside areas that were already effected. Once they had it figured out, they did it. They did whatever they had to do.

Of course the plague was worse than coronavirus. That's what makes it such an outrageously ridiculous claim that they didn't disrupt the economy to deal with it. So is this your entire plan the whole time? Claim that people responded to the Black Death less severely than this. Then when it's pointed out to you that dur, that's not true, you point out that the Black Death was more deadly than this. So, like yeah. There goes two pages. Please don't waste any more of my time.
 
Airyaman said:
And? In those days, thousands of people were killed or hurt at their jobs, but over time that changed. Ever stop to wonder why?
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Because less human labor is required in dangerous professions? People still die in work related accidents.

If you're referring to OSHA, there's a considerable difference between requiring people to have fire extinguishers around (or what have you) versus not letting people leave their homes.
 
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