One of the great fear-mongering bugaboos of the Covid-19 pandemic has been “hospitals overwhelmed!” Except that, as we’ve too often seen, that’s just not the case.
In fact, the Covid-19 pandemic would not, on a strict reading of case numbers and fatalities, likely be ranked that highly among the world’s most devastating pandemics.
The problem, of course, is knowing just how accurate figures both past and present really are: especially when hysterical reporting deliberately overstates matters.
Louisiana hospitals are running out of ICU beds as COVID-19 cases surge in the state.
But is that a very accurate claim? The reporting certainly makes it sound dire.
Our Lady of Lourdes and Oschner Lafayette General hospitals have run out of ICU beds. Our Lady of Lourdes has resorted to converting regular beds outside of the ICU to deal with the virus, KATC ABC 3 reported.
“Part of that reason and why it’s such a high percentage of our 70 patients is we’re seeing enhanced severity of this illness in these individuals who, many of whom, are otherwise completely healthy,” Dr. Henry Kaufman, interim chief medical officer at Our Lady of Lourdes, said at a press briefing.
There are three beds open out of 156 in Region 4 of the state, with more than 1,000 people hospitalized across Louisiana due to the virus, according to the outlet.
“About four weeks ago we had ten people in our whole health system with COVID and today we have 97, ” Chief Medical Officer at Ochsner Lafayette General Amanda Logue said.
There are a total of 162 people on ventilators from the coronavirus in the state.
The Hill
Wow, that sounds bad… unless, of course, you dig behind the numbers the media are choosing to feed us. Suddenly, it looks suspiciously like cherry-picking.
OK, there are 162 people on ventilators in the state and three beds open out of 156 in Region 4 of the state.
But Louisiana has seven regions. So how are the other 6 doing, and how many ICU beds does the state actually have?
As it turns out, Louisana as a whole has 1,289 ICU beds. So if all 162 people on ventilators are in ICU, that means there are 1,127 ICU beds still available across the state.
Of course, there is still the normal caseload on ICU, surely? As data shows, Covid patients are a relatively small part of the ICU caseload, and even with Covid patients added to the normal caseload, nearly 400 beds — 22% of capacity — remain unoccupied. Even when the Louisiana system was most loaded, in January 2021, around 400 beds were still free. In fact, Louisiana has been chugging along at much the same occupancy level for the past year.
With regard to its total in-patient capacity, Covid patients have only taken up a small fraction of the system’s capacity.
The same is true across the US as a whole. The US hospital system has ramped up and down to meet demand – which peaked in mid-winter (northern hemisphere) 2021. Even now, Covid hospitalisations are a third of what they were in January.
So the real situation seems to be that a regional cluster has hit two hospitals especially hard. But Louisiana still has another 260 hospitals with over 400 ICU beds open, to take patients.
Suddenly, things don’t seem so catastrophic.
Still, it’s terrible that Louisiana is experiencing such an outbreak. It must be one of those foolish states, like Florida, which rejected lockdowns.
Except that it’s not.
The Louisiana governor enacted heavy restrictions in March 2020, including closing schools, limiting businesses to takeaway only, and strictly limiting large gatherings. Then Governor Edwards announced a statewide stay-at-home order (what we here would call a lockdown). Later, Edwards closed bars and announced mask mandates. In October 2020, a petition to overturn Edwards’s public health emergency declaration and the statewide mask mandate was denied.
New Orleans was moved to a “modified phase 3” in March, with Edwards citing vaccination progress. Indoor mask mandates and other restrictions remain.
Hysterical reporting like this is just one of the reasons it’s so difficult to objectively judge the Wuhan pandemic against others. Whereas in 1968, official counts of infections and deaths were ridiculously lax, now they’re just as ludicrously over-reported.
No doubt the government, dictatorial public health bureaucrats and deranged media think they’re doing the right thing. But gibbering insane propaganda 24/7 isn’t helping anyone.
No one ever makes a sensible decision in the grip of panic: not individuals, not “experts” and certainly not governments.
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