Wow.

quote:

North Dakota's hospitals have reached their limit, and the coming weeks could push them past their capabilities, Gov. Doug Burgum said at a news conference on Monday, Nov. 9.

Due to a major shortage of health care staffing, the state's hospitals have a severe lack of available beds. Rising COVID-19 hospitalizations and high noncoronavirus admissions, some resulting from residents who deferred health care earlier in the pandemic, have caused the crunch on medical centers.

Burgum said hospitals are implementing their "surge" plans, and some will be voluntarily stopping elective surgeries to free up staff. He added that the state will coordinate with hospitals to move nurses to medical centers in most dire need of staff.

In an attempt to alleviate some of the staffing concerns, Burgum announced that interim State Health Officer Dirk Wilke has amended an order that will allow health care workers with asymptomatic cases of COVID-19 to continue working in COVID-19 units at hospitals and nursing homes.

The move aligns with "crisis" guidelines from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Since only patients with COVID-19 could receive care from doctors and nurses with the virus, Burgum said he believes there will be little risk of more spread. He added that health care workers in COVID-19 units already wear protective gear to prevent them from contracting the virus.

The Republican governor said health care providers asked the state to take the extraordinary step, adding that "apparently some (providers) had the ability to do this in other states."

https://www.grandforksherald.c...ses-can-stay-at-work

I mean, I know that the COVID-positive health care workers are supposed to only care for patients with COVID, but with the virus being so easily transmitted, even having the asymptomatic workers in the building has to raise the risk for everyone.

500,000-person motorcycle rallies have consequences. Having GOP control over institutions has consequences. They prize their freedoms to infect, so ...

Sorry for not sounding particularly sympathetic. I'm waiting to see their governor react like NY and lock everyone down. Waiting ... waiting ...

Lock the f*ucking state down, asshat.

It is raging all around the country and there is no national plan.

It's a horrifying mess, not only in North Dakota.

I have watching the Washington Post's state-by-state COVID-19 trackers and have noticed that North Dakota have been leading the "new infections per 100k population" for weeks by now, and have been wondering when news like this would break, that they start running out of hospital beds.

It's only going to get worse.

https://www.politico.com/news/...n-mask-orders-436385

Around here, the mask situation has been interesting. Folks wear masks when they go indoors (e.g. grocery store), but mask wearing outdoors is pretty sparse (which seems reasonable, as I don't see a reason to wear a mask outdoors if you can socially distance instead).

The tennis world is beyond bizarre. In our county, players are required to wear masks while playing. As a result, participation in league tennis has plummeted. Normally, I would be playing on 3-4 different teams, but I am only on one. There was so much resistance to mask wearing during play that our county moved all matches to the neighboring county that has no mask mandate.

League tennis Covid rules still require that each player in a doubles match bring their own can of balls, with no one touching the balls brought by another player. So what is actually happening? No one bothers with the extra cans of balls because it is wasteful and silly -- there is no reason to believe fuzzy tennis balls being whacked around transmit Covid.

Mask compliance at tennis facilities has become something of a flashpoint. First, "youth" do not have to wear masks, so you will see a group of adults on a court wearing masks and groups of teens on adjacent courts not wearing masks.

Second, some people just flout the mask mandate and don't wear masks at all while they play. As you might imagine, it is very difficult to run around wearing any kind of mask, so people don't wear them at all, wear them around the mouth and leave their nose out, wear comically loose masks that do nothing, or keep them around their chin. At times, someone will complain to the county, which will send inspectors, but they can't do anything because the rule is you don't have to wear a mask "for medical reasons," and the inspectors cannot inquire about anyone's medical condition. One lady in our group dropped out because she was mad that the four men on the next court did not wear masks even though our group did (oddly, I suggested we just move over one court and leave a court between us and the unmasked men, but she didn't want to do that for some reason and instead just kept griping about it).

Me, I just kind of go with the flow. If my playing companions want to wear masks, I wear one (but I pull it down when I need to get some air and I wear a plastic cage under it, so I'm not sure how much good it is doing). If they are OK not wearing masks, also fine by me.

One interesting side effect of wearing a mask is that it interferes with communication. You feel like you are wearing a muzzle, so you don't tend to talk (and if you do talk, your voice is muffled). I have noticed that this actually causes players to come closer to one another than they otherwise would. The norm in tennis is that if you are going to hit a ball or change position, you tell your partner so you two don't collide. I feel like I have more near-collisions while wearing a mask because my partner and I tend to be more silent. So the mask, which is supposed to keep me safe from Covid, actually makes me come closer to my partner than I otherwise would.

The ICUs in Oklahoma City and Norman are basically full. They've been sending people to Tulsa, which is also nearly full. Mary Anna told me about a hospital tent that was constructed somewhere in Texas to deal with overflow, and I think they're doing the same in Utah and maybe Wisconsin.

And it isn't even Thanksgiving yet, and it's supposed to get worse over the winter.

A tent. In Wisconsin. At the beginning of winter. Swell. If it was Mongolia, they'd cover that with a couple hundred yak pelts.

Maybe they should get in touch with the folks in China that built a 10,000 bed hospital in a week. Or the folks in England that turned a sports stadium into a hospital.


And it's not just beds. You need people with the proper skills and training. Health care workers are getting hit harder than the rest of us since they are exposed to patients all day.

At some point we have to start taking this seriously. Waiting until January 21 is not going to cut it.

On how we evaluate risk.

https://www.propublica.org/art...-during-the-pandemic

Interesting article, WTG.

Why don't people wear masks? Well, most of it is due to Trump politicizing masks.

But our health experts really failed us on this one.

First they said don't bother with a mask.

Then they said masks were helpful, with the benefit being you won't spread the virus to others. Do it for others, we were told. OK, but that doesn't motivate everyone because some folks don't give a flying fig about anyone else.

Then they said, "Oh, hey. Masks also protect the wearer."

My question is this: Was it really that hard to figure all of that out? They knew in February how the virus spread. They knew or should have known that a simple cloth mask would protect people from spreading droplets or inhaling them. Even if masks are not perfect protection for the wearer, surely they would catch some droplets and protect better than nothing, right? That's what I always thought.

So why did it take seven months to get to the current mask recommendations?

Cindy, the initial advice not to wear masks was due to a shortage and trying to make sure healthcare workers had masks.

Jf

The motorcycle rally was stupid, it was also in Sturgis, South Dakota.
How much traffic flows into North Dakota?
No doubt other states will catch up with North Dakota soon.

quote:

Originally posted by Jack Frost:
Cindy, the initial advice not to wear masks was due to a shortage and trying to make sure healthcare workers had masks.

Jf

That was March. It is mid-November, and they are just saying masks protect the wearer?