OldShadeOfBlue said:
DRAINS_05 said:
Well I know a couple of Doctors in downtown Houston and the numbers being reported about overcrowded icu beds are misleading as he said most icu beds being used currently are not covid19 related. Only about 20 percent are covod patients. Then the news sees that there are full beds and blames it all on covid. Another friend who works downtown in the labs working on possible treatments told me that they talk behind the scenes and all believe the virus is too perfectly made to attack humans to not have been helped along in a lab setting. They also cannot publicly comment on the virus as they have been threatened of blacklisting. We live in a mess of a world these days people.
Back up a sec.. You're telling me out of every possible way you could find yourself in the ICU, covid makes up 1 in 5 and that doesn't strike you as concerning?
But leaders of several major hospitals in Houston this week urged the public to remain calm, suggesting that the extent of the outbreak has been overstated.
At a virtual press conference on Thursday, the chief executives of Houston Methodist, Memorial Hermann Health System, St. Luke's Health, and Texas Children's hospitals stated that their hospitals are well-prepared to handle an even greater increase in patients than that which has emerged over the past few weeks.
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.
He pointed out that his hospital one year ago was at 95% ICU capacity, similar to the numbers the hospital is seeing today. "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."
He noted that around 25% of ICU patients are COVID-19-positive. But 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.
Texas Children's Hospital CEO Mark Wallace added that his facility has "a lot of capacity."
"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.
"There is not a scenario, in my opinion, where the demand for our beds ... would eclipse our capability," he continued. "I cannot imagine that. I just cannot."