Covid-19

[kmcrawfo]

Then where are the ICU beds and PPE? Late stage capitalism has stripped our health care system to the bone.

Health care cannot be for-profit.

The united states has bay far the most ICU beds in the world per capita. When you add the scalability to our system we blow everyone out of the water. We also have the most PPE by a wide margin. We have more labs doing tests, but have had a shortage of the actually swabs/kits. HOwever, the swabs and kits are out there. Part of the problem is that many hospitals are not aware of which labs can do the testing. This week I personally setup 2 regional hospitals who said they did not have access to testing with a lab in Atlanta that is now getting them results in 24 hours. Before that they were waiting 8-10 days for results and did not have enough swabs. I donated to them 125 kits from my own offices which could be repurposed and used for the test. They just didn't know this lab even existed.

There also was a PPE vendor in Kentucky with a surplus of recently produced PPE which I am helping get connected with local hospitals. We do have a communication issue, but it is because of our capitalistic system that private industry is being invoative now. My neighbors own a distillery and they are now making hand sanitizer in 50 gallon batches to supply to hospitals, firestations, etc.

In terms of ICU numbers before we started to scale up our system if I recall the ICU Beds per capita was something like this:

USA had about 35 ICU beds per 100,000
China had 3 ICU beds per 100,000
Italy had 12 ICU beds per 100,000
Spain has 9 ICU beds per 100,000

This was before Vanderbilt turning an entire parking garage into an extension of they Hospital, the US military deploying their floating hospital ships, FEMA building hospitals and ICU beds where needed, etc.

Do we have enough, probably not. Will people die because they can't access care. Most likely. Are we better able to handle this than any other country from a healthcare standpoint. Also almost certainly.