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Comment by dstaley | Hacker News Reader

> Or what about the fact we are 2 years into this and we still haven't built a significant amount of hospitals?

If I understand correctly, there isn't a lack of literal beds/space; it's a lack of personnel. Basically hospitals are unable to staff themselves at the levels needed to accomodate being basically 100% full. This is compounded by the fact that hospitals are struggling to retain healthcare workers, who are burnt out, and the fact that healthcare isn't something that someone can easily switch to.

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Unfortunately, there is absolutely a lack of beds. Someone I know was in emergency last week (totally unrelated to pandemic) and had to wait an entire day before actually being properly admitted to a ward because there were no beds available for them. So they layed in an emergency room "booth"[0] for close to 24 hours, until a bed became available. There are lots of news articles about the lack of beds/capacity all over the place [1][2][3]

[0] I don't know the right word for it, but a small room usually used for short-term (<few hours) evaluation of a patient before passing them along to the next phase, like admitting to a ward or sending them home or etc.

[1] https://vancouversun.com/news/covid-19-kelowna-general-hospi...

[2] https://www.kgw.com/article/news/health/coronavirus/oregon-e...

[3] https://richmond.com/news/national/with-no-beds-hospitals-sh...

When you are told there is a lack of beds, it really doesn't have to mean a lack of physical beds.

A bed that isn't staffed with a nurse is no more useful then laying in your bed at home.

Yeah, people keep responding to this, so I'll reply.. Yeah, the beds are literally full, at least in the hospital I was in. People on beds in the hallways and stuff. It's not a staffing shortage or anything like that.

"beds" and capacity can be synonymous in casual medical conversation. If the staff had plenty of literal beds, but no staff for them, they might still tell you that they had no beds, because they are just saying they don't have the capacity.

Like when a restaurant tells you they don't have any available tables, when you can clearly see empty tables.

This is down to a startling lack of imagination and flexibility on the part of healthcare providers and government healthcare regulators. They could train unemployed batistas to tend to COVID patients in a couple of weeks hugely reducing the pressure on the rest of the health system. You don't need to know all the shitloads required to be a doctor if all you're doing is tending to covid patients to try and somewhat reduce the dying.

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