Michigan Absentee Voting Surges in GOP-Leaning Counties, Slower in Detroit

[djmilf]

Originally Posted by tribecavsbrowns

You said the hospitals in Metro Detroit were slammed, taking patients into the hallways. Presumably the hospitals in the north had space, since they didn't have Covid, or whatever.

You do understand my point, right?

I get that you're trying to make a point.

However, I dispute that the extra hospital beds up north would somehow alleviate Metro Detroit's shortage. At the time, Detroit's need dwarfed any beds available up north. Plus, hospital beds taken by COVID patients equals beds not available for other patients. It wasn't just COVID people being stacked up, it was also people in emergent care situations. And these two groups need to be kept separate from each other.

Your point also doesn't address that it's a bad idea for people to flee from infected areas into non-infected areas. Quarantines, when enforced, are an effective tool in fighting pandemics - or are you arguing otherwise?

Back in the fall of 2021, my father had to be checked into the hospital for what turned out to be congestive heart failure. We would literally wait days in the ER, across the room from COVID patients. There were no beds available - the only way to get a bed was when someone was discharged or someone died. When they finally found a bed for my father, and he was diagnosed properly, the hospital staff kept pushing for him to be moved out of his room to a hospice center to free up his bed (nasty situation, some siblings were in denial of our father's diagnosis).

I've lived through a COVID overflow situation in a hospital, when people had more knowledge about the disease. Because of that, I take issue with people who didn't have to deal directly with it and tend to downplay it, especially for the time when there was a great deal that was not known about COVID.

[tribecavsbrowns]

Originally Posted by djmilf

I get that you're trying to make a point.

However, I dispute that the extra hospital beds up north would somehow alleviate Metro Detroit's shortage. At the time, Detroit's need dwarfed any beds available up north. Plus, hospital beds taken by COVID patients equals beds not available for other patients. It wasn't just COVID people being stacked up, it was also people in emergent care situations. And these two groups need to be kept separate from each other.

Your point also doesn't address that it's a bad idea for people to flee from infected areas into non-infected areas. Quarantines, when enforced, are an effective tool in fighting pandemics - or are you arguing otherwise?

Back in the fall of 2021, my father had to be checked into the hospital for what turned out to be congestive heart failure. We would literally wait days in the ER, across the room from COVID patients. There were no beds available - the only way to get a bed was when someone was discharged or someone died. When they finally found a bed for my father, and he was diagnosed properly, the hospital staff kept pushing for him to be moved out of his room to a hospice center to free up his bed (nasty situation, some siblings were in denial of our father's diagnosis).

I've lived through a COVID overflow situation in a hospital, when people had more knowledge about the disease. Because of that, I take issue with people who didn't have to deal directly with it and tend to downplay it, especially for the time when there was a great deal that was not known about COVID.

There was no such thing as a "non-infected area." That was part of a fairy tale. For some reason, you're speaking in terms of theory, when we have actual history as to what happened. No matter what restrictions were put in place, Covid spread to every corner of the map.

In hindsight, those people with vacation homes not only weren't going to create any problem by hiding out there that wouldn't have happened anyway -- I think a reasonable case can be made that they might have been safer there.

[djmilf]

Originally Posted by tribecavsbrowns

There was no such thing as a "non-infected area." That was part of a fairy tale. For some reason, you're speaking in terms of theory, when we have actual history as to what happened. No matter what restrictions were put in place, Covid spread to every corner of the map.

Yes, COVID eventually spread to every corner. But not right away. That was one of the friction points in Michigan during Spring 2020 - why did people in Alpena, where the COVID was low or non-existent at the time, need to follow quarantine rules needed in Detroit?

In hindsight, those people with vacation homes not only weren't going to create any problem by hiding out there that wouldn't have happened anyway -- I think a reasonable case can be made that they might have been safer there.

The assumption in the above statement is that those people with vacation homes wouldn't have brought COVID with them, or if they did then they wouldn't need to go to the hospital.

I also wonder about the vacation home people actually staying in their homes...they would still need to venture out to get food and such. Did rural areas have food delivery services back then?