When our lockdown began last month, we were told that if we didn’t stay home there would be overcrowded hospitals, overrun intensive care wards, a lack of ventilators, and that people would probably die in their homes due to lack of care. So we went on lockdown. Not only the big cities, but everyone everywhere.
We stayed home, businesses closed, and millions of Americans were out of work. Besides New York City, the “overwhelming surge of coronavirus patients” never really appeared and the predicted numbers were off by hundreds of thousands.
For example, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis noted that health experts predicted 465,000 Floridians would be hospitalized due to coronavirus and as of April 22, that number is a little over 2,000.
The New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo said last month their hospitals would need 30,000 ventilators, but never came close to needing that many. The projected peak was about 5,000, not even close to 30,000.
Last week President Trump announced that the USNS Comfort will be leaving New York City. This Navy hospital ship was deployed to New York to provide emergency care for coronavirus patients and was prepared to treat 500 patients. At most, 71 beds were occupied. Another example is in Seattle where an army field hospital was set up in a pro football stadium. They later shut down without ever having seen a single patient.
Texas has taken note of this. Gov. Greg Abbott started loosening lockdown measures and prohibiting most medical procedures so hospitals aren’t overwhelmed. Makeshift overflow centers might not even be used in Dallas or Houston at all, where coronavirus cases were concentrated in the state.
In Illinois, fewer than half of their ventilator supplies have been put to use. Approximately, 757 out of the 1,345 sent. In Virginia, only about 22% of their ventilator supply is being used.
Because the Left media has created such hysteria and fear of this virus, hospitals and health care systems nationwide have had to lay off thousands of employees. Most hospital revenue comes from “non-essential” procedures such as coronary angioplasty and stents, procedures that are necessary but not exactly emergencies. If they can’t perform these other procedures because they are deemed “non-essential”, then they can’t pay their bills, or their employees.
Liberals have created such deeply flawed and inaccurate models to base the lockdown procedures off of and it is affecting governors and healthcare officials nationwide. There should have been more skepticism brought to the stand and less panic when it came to facing an entirely new disease with almost no reliable information, thanks to China.
Treating the entire nation as New York City has cost millions of jobs and taken the economy to a place that will be hard to recover from. Manageable, yes, but difficult. Some governors and mayors have begun reversing course and opening up their states and communities for business in a phased, cautious manner. Democrats claiming that if you don’t stay home to “flatten the curve” your kid won’t have a hospital bed in such an overcrowded hospital has turned out to be false. New evidence everyday is emerging that that just isn’t going to happen. Let’s be honest, the disease is far less lethal than we feared it to be, as medical experts learn more about it everyday.
Of course then, the Left will claim, without a doubt, that without these extreme measures our hospitals surely would’ve been overcrowded. There’s always something. At this point though, we can say that the predictions have been way off. The experts have been wrong and the best thing we can do now is start lifting lockdown orders so that people can get back to work.
