I am in a designated "hot spot" ... that is enough about my actual location. For the few who get very sick, enough to be intubated, this is unreal because they go downhill very fast...and often look and sound "okay" but can't keep their oxygen levels up. My major city's hospitals are basically closed for anything but emergencies and Covid patients needing nursing care. All the beds are not full (even when there are reports of overflowing) but rather units are closed ... like surgery and units that care for elective procedures. I work in a 600 bed hospital and when I left on Friday, I think only two units and the behaviorial health were not Covid. I haven't been to ICU but the PACU was patients lined up on ventilators...no curtains pulled because the staff needed to be able to see everyone at all times. The hallways and unit before that one was completely empty of people.
In a normal year, every hospital bed is full during flu season...and people are often waiting for beds to open up. Flu patients are put in isolation all over the hospital. The staff has enough supplies to be performing proper infection control practices like throwing away the gowns and masks every time we walk out of a room cleaning up and putting on clean isolation gear at the next room. We also are vaccinated to reduce our risk at getting what we are exposed to.
This virus we know nothing about. They are changing our policies daily and they are not based on what is in the best interest of the staff's safety or preventing infection from moving from room to room. We simply don't have the tools we are used to working with to protect ourselves or our patients. We are doing our best...and nurses, doctors and other healthcare people are dying...because they are forced to work without proper protection with infected patients and they don't care if the staff is high risk or immune compromised. (Yes, your nurse might be actively getting chemo while caring for you because she can't afford to lose her medical insurance).
As for those "without pre-existing conditions"...well, being a smoker or vape-er isn't a pre-existing condition but it does compromise your lungs. I don't know how much marijuana messes with a person's lungs and most people don't identify this. I know that smoker or COPD has been on the chart for almost all my Covid patients.
The government's role in this IMO is to keep the virus out like we did really well with many other pandemic threats in past years. However, this virus doesn't have symptoms early in its course so it couldn't be screened like previous viruses. And the US citizens didn't really take the warnings by the government to prevent spread seriously. Did you see all the college students on the beaches...and stayed longer to party after their colleges closed? (Not likely all Trump fans). We did this to ourselves.
Then panic set out was people started hording...stupid things like toilet paper (for a respiratory disease)??
For past pandemics...(yes, there have been some with 2009 being the most recent)...schools didn't close and the country didn't fall apart even though 60 million people got sick and 12,000 died. Most people didn't even realize that happened. But the media wasn't out to "get" Obama and blame him for everything...or scare everyone because they had forgotten the difference between the news and editorials.
Last year, over 20,000 Americans died of the flu. In 2017, over 80,000 Americans died of the flu (did that make the news?). Trump is struggling to keep up with the media hype that is causing nationwide panic that is not proportional to this disease. The biggest issue is that this disease is new and we are having to figure it out in the trenches.
People are [bless and do not curse][bless and do not curse][bless and do not curse][bless and do not curse]ed that he doesn't overstep his federal boundaries...but he can't help states like mine until the state government fills out the correct paperwork and ASKs for the federal government's help. I think my Governor deserves the rebuke she got. It reminds me of the Louisiana governor getting made that he (she?) didn't get more federal help faster after Katrina...but never got around to following the steps needed to get it. Bush was waiting to jump in but couldn't...per our rightfully given states rights in our union.
Every flu season is a mess in the hospital. I predict that next year, Covid patients will be put on normally function units next to hospitalized flu patients and it won't be a crisis situation beyond just normal overflowing flu season overflow...maybe less if there is a vaccine developed.