As we all continue to distance
ourselves from other people and sanitize everything we touch or that comes into
our houses, I can't help but worry about all the older and chronically ill
people who have been exposed to the COVID-19, and the families of those who
have died.
I can't help but wonder how many
would have been saved had we begun fighting this months ago. I can't
help but think that what I've said for many years, we have a broken
health care system, has proven to be so true, and now we hear that from
many people who didn't make much noise in the past.
I knew our health care system was
not the best in the world when my family members (four
or more) died from medical mistakes. It became horribly evident to me when
the best health care system failed my husband.
His care was a grotesque medley
of mistakes from the wrong diagnosis in the beginning to the end of his life
after a team of doctors in Emory Hospital incorrectly diagnosed him with an
infectious disease. They filled him with antibiotics, even after they were told
he was fighting cancer. I knew the cancer had come roaring back, but those smart
physicians refused to contact his cancer doctor in Blairsville. Hospitals and
physician practices are in competition. I didn’t know that, but learned the
hard way.
I wish it had not taken a
pandemic to prove my words. Our hospitals, poorly prepared, with insufficient supplies and far too few nurses, evidently had made no preparation for
the day when a health crisis would explode this country. From what I have read
and heard these past weeks, scientists and smart medical people who tried to
warn us were ignored. In 2015, Bill Gates said we were not prepared for a
deadly virus that would be coming.
Our pompous leaders fell way behind on
preparing us, and we the people buried our heads in the sand, not wanting to
believe we were not the best. We have heard and preached to ourselves
that we are the best until we believed it. Or, we did believe it
until a few weeks ago.
I am sympathetic to Senator
Sanders who has proclaimed for years that we need a new method of health care.
We need a central system where all people can be fairly treated. But that is
not the basics of this problem to me.
My husband and I had insurance
and could see doctors, but the administrators are more dollar-minded than
healing-minded. Even now hospitals have been fighting over who will get the supplies needed in
this crisis. With no federal oversight, it has come down to governors trying to
purchase the needed supplies. Hospitals in NYC are overrun with sick people while some hospitals, where there
are fewer patients, still have masks and gowns.
The governors in those states hold on to them because they fear what will be
coming. It makes for states competing with each other and our citizens paying
the price.
I imagine some hospitals hoarded
their ventilators because of what they expect will happen in their area soon.
Small hospitals like Phoebe Putney in Albany, Georgia, were swamped with
coronavirus patients and were not prepared at all. Not enough nursing help, not
nearly enough ventilators, and not enough protection for the medical staff.
Where could they go for help? We had no plan in place for such a
disaster.
This deadly virus will kill
thousands of people and I think many could be saved if only we had proactive
people in leadership. But, I was told by a city government
employee, government is always reactive. That is why two or
three people have to die at an intersection before a stop light is installed or
any effort is made to prevent what might happen next.
I have been accused of
over-reacting, but I would rather over-react by taking precautions than wait and and see. By then it is often too late.
We need more people in leadership
who look for approaching problems and prepare for them, not wait until they
have to react, as we are doing now.
What do you think? Are you one to
act on your concerns before they become major? Do you think our leaders in this
pandemic acted soon enough?
