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Comment by Frondo | Hacker News Reader

In Southern Oregon, people with cancer or who are at risk of heart attack or stroke are being made to wait for care, because the hospitals are filled with unvaccinated COVID-19 patients:

https://www.oregonlive.com/coronavirus/2021/09/absolutely-he...

In another rural region (Idaho, maybe?) there was just that, someone who had some treatable condition who was unable to be seen for all the unvaccinated COVID patients, and who died from the condition. I couldn't find the article, but it was just published on some authoritative news service a few days ago, in case you'd like to look for it.

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I mean the government and these private hospitals had a year and a half to build capacity. Last I checked building capacity was supposed to be the rationale for the whole “flatten the curve” thing back in March of 2020.

Why are hospitals “full” when they had all this time? Why is society supposed to be punished for a failure of leadership to do what they said?

Doctors and nurses don't get built in a year.

That seems like such an excuse. A year and a half is plenty of time to get creative. Pull people out of retirement. Let nursing students do more. Pay truckloads of money to all of them. I dunno. Figure it out. These folks are supposed to be the “experts”… what have they been doing this whole time?

Saying “no it cannot be done” is just not a valid excuse.

> Pull people out of retirement, Pay truckloads of money

So take the most vulnerable age group (old people) - and stick them on the front lines, looking after fat lazy middle aged people who are too lazy to get a 50cc jab.

They are retired doctors, they are not retards.

> what have they been doing this whole time?

Working on the most cost-effective, life-saving way to manage the pandemic: encouraging everyone who is able to to get vaccinated. Unfortunately, they had to work against an absurd scenario where an equal-opportunity virus has been politicized.

I am not a doctor so I cannot judge if “no it cannot be done” is valid or not.

But I think experts are allowed and expected to say “no it cannot be done” when something truly cannot be done. Experts are not superheroes and unlike superhero movies (just as example) there are matters that we cannot solve in a timely matter no matter how many experts we throw in the ring.

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