CV and mad panic behaviour

[Thryleon]

I hear people crapping on all the time about people not being in ICU during this crisis like thats all that matters.  Thing is, the ICU is no laughing matter, and just because they arent full, doesnt mean that if we let things go a bit further with COVID, they wouldnt be.

1.  ICU's are literally knife edge stuff.  If you are in one as a patient, you are either gone for all money, or are a slim chance of getting out alive.  They should be renamed Critical care units, but I think they don't want to panic people heading into them which is why they are branded ICU not CCU.

2.  The ICU's are not quick turnaround.  You dont go in one day, and then come out right as rain a couple of days after you aren't critical.  You go in on your death bed, and you end up in there for days on end in a life or death battle.  Sometimes the outcome of either can take days, weeks or months, and from what I understand we do quite well, but its no easy feat to be in an ICU.

3.  There arent as many ICU beds as everyone thinks there are.  I can tell you, that the network I work for, covers a very large catchment area, and based on additional spending we can maximise our ICU's at a grand total of 66 beds in 3 hospitals with emergency departments, and a host of others without any capability....  Food for thought, our catchment area is quite large and would have a couple of million people in it from Metropolitan Melbourne.

Sure, there are other options to flex into temporary setups, and private hospitals of which I am not aware of, but I can tell you now, that if the public understand that having 15+ patients in my network with covid is 25% of their capability to look after ANY patient requiring an ICU, then they might have a better understanding.  The ICU's are not generally packed, but they are never empty and from memory Ive never seen them less than 50% vacant at any one time.  I have only been into ICU few times during the COVID crisis, and on each occasion have seen at least a few COVID patients.  During this relatively mundane wave, there was a distinct panic about what it could potentially mean if things got out of hand with the exponential growth.

Food for thought.  Politicise this all you like, the hospital networks were struggling at one point, and there was some genuine issues with staffing the beds, irrespective of what people may have thought about hospital capacity.  Nurse to patient ratios are still a thing, and you cant open a bed if there is no one to look after the patient lying in there.