I work in healthcare IT. ICU beds are expensive. They try to keep them at 85-95% capacity at all times. They are always 'almost full'. Some smaller hospitals will only have 4 or 5 ICU beds and that's normal. It's not profitable to have a bunch of expensive equipment and nurses set up just waiting. They will have extra beds and nurses and the like ready to go on the fly to toss more people in beds as needed. Hospitals, even 'non-profits', care about money. They need to pay their CEOs millions and they can't afford that if they have massive, unused wards set up.
The bottleneck is going to be staffing. No use having a "bed" without trained staff to attend the patient. Hospitals were first laying off staff because facilities were UNDER-used (as seen in the many "empty hospital" videos that kept getting taken down), and now they are further reducing staff both voluntarily and involuntarily via the new mandates.
All hospitals have rooms with vent systems with either positive or negative air pressure to isolate contagious with patients and protect sterile environments.
Also, rooms have UV sterilizers, I’m not sure if all hospitals do that. The one I worked at did.
Many hospitals have rooms that can be converted to an ICU. The problem is that hospitals are always understaffed. Always.
Also different hospitals have different capacity. For example, Texas has 400 hospitals, but 200 of them are rural with less than 4 physical rooms. Other hospitals have hundreds of rooms. 3 Covid patients, 1 non Covid patient in a 4 bed hospital will be 75% Covid at 100% capacity.
Of course a rural hospital will send a seriously ill person to a big city hospital ICU. So big city hospitals are full of ICU patients from across city and sometimes across the state.
It's my understanding that most hospitals are built to be at or near capacity all the time. You can't generate income with empty beds.
It's more entertaining for them to virtue signal than it is to actually do things that might help.
I work in healthcare IT. ICU beds are expensive. They try to keep them at 85-95% capacity at all times. They are always 'almost full'. Some smaller hospitals will only have 4 or 5 ICU beds and that's normal. It's not profitable to have a bunch of expensive equipment and nurses set up just waiting. They will have extra beds and nurses and the like ready to go on the fly to toss more people in beds as needed. Hospitals, even 'non-profits', care about money. They need to pay their CEOs millions and they can't afford that if they have massive, unused wards set up.
Remember the Hospital Ship, when we see that on duty somewhere, I'll believe it.
It's just there to increase hysteria.
Sadly, 99% of people I know personally plays into this shit.
Like marionettes on a tug.
Our local hospitals are near 90% capacity, but only 5-10% of weekly patients are Covid-related.
But also, Trump showed us there's a 1000-bed hospital barge waiting in reserve that can move from coast to coast in 5 days.
The bottleneck is going to be staffing. No use having a "bed" without trained staff to attend the patient. Hospitals were first laying off staff because facilities were UNDER-used (as seen in the many "empty hospital" videos that kept getting taken down), and now they are further reducing staff both voluntarily and involuntarily via the new mandates.
All hospitals have rooms with vent systems with either positive or negative air pressure to isolate contagious with patients and protect sterile environments.
Also, rooms have UV sterilizers, I’m not sure if all hospitals do that. The one I worked at did.
Many hospitals have rooms that can be converted to an ICU. The problem is that hospitals are always understaffed. Always.
Also different hospitals have different capacity. For example, Texas has 400 hospitals, but 200 of them are rural with less than 4 physical rooms. Other hospitals have hundreds of rooms. 3 Covid patients, 1 non Covid patient in a 4 bed hospital will be 75% Covid at 100% capacity.
Of course a rural hospital will send a seriously ill person to a big city hospital ICU. So big city hospitals are full of ICU patients from across city and sometimes across the state.