This from from Spewing's post #262...
"...The second point he makes is that ICU utilization is only at 73% capacity, and that COVID-19 patients are not the majority of these cases. First, 70% is threshold level of concern. Given fluctuation of admittance, if you are living above 70%, you are in a position where a bad week could become problematic. His argument is that it has been high before. This does not reduce the threat or risk. .."
Apparently you chose to ignore the statements from the Texas hospitals (which comprised most of the article!) themselves, and you trot out a "70%" thresh-hold that the article decimates. Forgive the skeptical among us who would put more credibility in the hospital people themselves. For those who are actually willing to read what the Texas hospitals themselves say, here it is. For those who are not, for whatever reason, these facts are not for you. {Snide comments within brackets like this are not part of the original article, as you might conclude on your own}...
"... So here are the statewide facts: As of June 25, Texas had 54,700 staffed acute care hospital beds, but only 41,950 were being used, implying a occupancy rate of just 76.7% and 12,750 empty beds still available.
Moreover, only about 5,000 beds representing 12% of the current census were occupied by confirmed or suspected Covid patients. So as of June 25 the state had nearly 2.5X more empty hospital beds than it had Covid patients, notwithstanding the surge of new cases and hospitalizations during the month of June.
In fact, that’s not the half of it. Owing to seasonal factors, the number of empty hospital beds has actually been rising during the spring months even in the face of the soaring Covid caseload.
That’s right. On March 18, Texas had 46,550 occupied hospital beds, reflecting an occupancy rate of 85% or well above the 76.7% level as of June 25.
But back in March virtually none of these occupied beds were attributable to Covid patients. That’s because at that point there had been only be 83 confirmed Covid cases and 2 deaths reported for the entire state!
By then what happened over the next three months, as the Covid caseload built up from zero to the present 5,000, is that even more beds emptied out due to:
state orders prohibiting elective surgeries and other treatments;
normal seasonal declines in occupancy; and
aggressive reclassification of patients admitted for other reasons as Covid patients.
As to the latter point, it seems that Texas health officials started logging every single COVID-19-positive patient in the state as a COVID-19 hospitalization, even if the patients themselves were admitted seeking treatment for something other than the coronavirus. {you don't think they get paid extra for these patients, do you?}
As Lindsey Rosales, a spokesman for the Texas Department of Public Health Services, confirmed recently to an independent investigator:
“The number of hospitalized patients includes patients with a lab-confirmed case of COVID-19 even if the person is admitted to the hospital for a different reason,” Rosales said.
Moreover, nearly everyone admitted for some other medical condition – and presumably asymptomatic for Covid – gets tested for Covid-19 before other treatments or surgeries are permitted:
Texas Health Resources, one of the state’s largest hospital systems, says on its website that its “patients [are] tested before most procedures.” Elective surgeries and other medical procedures in Texas have gone up in recent weeks as the state has gradually re-opened following its lockdown.
In other words, the first wave of Lockdowns created a huge backlog of demand for elective surgeries and other discretionary treatments, which were banned by state authorities. But once those bans were lifted and people got in the hospital for deferred treatments, they were tested for Covid and became the statistical gruel for the so-called second wave.
But even then, the Texas hospital statistics over the last three months make mincemeat out of the national media’s weekend narrative that Texas hospitals will soon be overflowing into the hallways. To wit, here is the trend of unused acute care beds in the Texas hospital system:
3/18: 8,155;
4/1: 18,411;
4/15: 21,489;
4/29: 19,432;
5/20: 16,035;
5/27: 15,315;
6/3: 15,219;
6/10: 13,271;
6/17: 14,993;
6/25: 12,571
In short, Texas had gone from virtually no Covid cases or deaths on March 18 to 131,917 cases and 2,296 deaths by June 25, but it actually had 56% more empty hospital beds on the latter date!
You can’t make this stuff up. The MSM is so intoxicated by Orange Man Bad that it has essentially turned journalism into a kangaroo court of juvenile imprecations.
Nor are we attempting to deceptively drown the case in statewide averages. As of last week, the Houston area alone had 12,458 staffed acute care beds (23% of the statewide total), but 2,675 or 21% of these were empty; and on top of that they had an additional surge capacity of another 925 beds.
That’s especially salient because the rise in cases in Texas and Houston has generally been among a much younger population than earlier in the pandemic, and the need has been for exactly these kinds of general beds, not ICU beds.
So the fact is, as of last week the Houston area hospitals had just 795 lab confirmed Covid patients, representing just 8% of their 9,785 daily census. That also means that given Houston’s 3,600 beds of remaining surge capacity, they could actually accommodate a 4X increase in their current Covid caseload.
As it happened, even the leadership of the Houston health care community finally had enough from CNN, NBC, and the rest of the Covid Calamity Howlers, and struck back this weekend with a resounding denial of this spurious crisis narrative.
For instance, the CEO of one Houston’s leading hospitals, Memorial Hermann, pulled no punches:
We actually still think we have plenty of capacity to meet the demand for Covid, as well as non-Covid patients. We’re always busy in the summertime, and what we’re seeing now is a typical summer for us.
Callender, whose not-for-profit health system has 17 hospitals in the Houston area, stressed that the medical network’s capacity is “constantly in flux” and needing to be managed. “But right now, we’re able to do that very well,” he said.
“Across our system, we have about 4,000 beds that we can bring into play” for intensive care, he said. “Right now, only about 30% are being utilized for Covid care, so we still have plenty of capacity for Covid patients as well as patients who need hospitalization for other illnesses.”
Doctors and nurses also have learned how to better treat Covid-19 patients after three months of its presence, said Callender, who joined Memorial Hermann in 2019.
“We’re seeing a slightly lower rate in terms of the number of typical hospital bed patients who convert to a need for ICU hospitalization. We’re also using ventilators less frequently,” he said. “We have more drugs at our disposable that we know help limit the severity and duration of the illness. So overall we’re faring better than we did just a couple months ago.”
Likewise, chimed in Dr. Marc Boom, President and CEO of another leading institution, Houston Methodist:
The number of hospitalizations are “being misinterpreted,” said Houston Methodist CEO Marc Boom, “and, quite frankly, we’re concerned that there is a level of alarm in the community that is unwarranted right now.”
“We do have the capacity to care for many more patients, and have lots of fluidity and ability to manage,” Boom said.
Boom pointed out that his hospital one year ago was also at 95% ICU capacity – long before Covid was a thing!
That’s right. Apparently, 95% utilization of the ICU is a typical June condition, not the sign of the Covid Apocalypse. And contrary to the heated headlines on the MSM, only about 25% of Houston’s fully occupied ICU’s are accounted for by Covid patients.
Again from Boom:
It is completely normal for us to have ICU capacities that run in the 80s and 90s,” he said. “That’s how all hospitals operate.”
…..the hospital “[has] many levers in our ability to adjust our ICU,” he said, claiming that the hospital capacity regularly reported by the media is “base” capacity rather than surge capacity.
Boom also alluded to hospitals’ ability to turn regular beds into ICU beds as well as to turn recovery, and pre- and post surgical areas into ICU areas if needed as a kind of coronavirus “flex area.”
Specifically, there are about 2,200 ICU beds in the Houston service area, but another 500 beds could be added to this after such planned for conversions and re-purposings. And Boom also pointed out an even more salient point:
Boom said overall, hospitals are seeing younger COVID-19 patients, who stay for a shorter period of time, and fewer deaths. Houston Methodist CEO Dr. Marc Boom told CNBC on Monday that the demographics of the outbreak have “flipped” and that the mostly-younger people arriving in the state’s hospitals often don’t require ICU beds, even though many do get very sick.
Finally, there was this rebuke to the smirking CNN anchor, who on Saturday had been bemoaning that the situation was allegedly so desperate that a Houston children’s hospital had been drafted into Covid service at great risk to the children.
Not at all, according to Mark Wallace, Texas Children’s Hospital president and CEO. Actually, this was just part of the systems’ surge plan:
Texas Children’s started accepting adult COVID-19 positive patients this week and is currently operating at a 74 percent ICU occupancy, Wallace said.
“We have the ability to take care of all of the Houstonians that need a critical care environment, that need to be operated on, or acute care,” Wallace said.