From everything I've read Mississippi is out of ICU beds because they test everybody for covid and if you are covid positive, regardless of symptoms, you get the "covid protocol" treatment. Said protocol adds significant overhead to everything. Perhaps they should revisit testing every individual for covid or maybe stop freaking out over every positive case.

Also, they had 1.6 years to build infrastructure to deal with this. That was the entire damn point of this in the first place. "Flatten the curve for two weeks to make sure healthcare systems can handle the load" There is literally zero excuse for society to suffer because no capacity was added. Zero.

You cannot even blame staffing shortages... they could have thrown truckloads of money at doctors and nurses to get them onboard. It would have still been cheaper and more effective than the nonsense we are doing now.

In short, yeah it sucks hospitals might be "full" but that ain't societies fault and we shouldn't be punished for it.

Judging by your stance across this thread I doubt it will matter, but I'll share it anyway for the readers. Take it for whatever you think it's worth.

My anecdotal experience via my SO who is an ICU nurse is that what you've read is not accurate. In the ICU I'm familiar with they do not have fewer beds available due to the covid protocols. The protocols do make their job more difficult and time consuming, but they have more beds than ever. Still, they're at capacity across our state due to an extreme influx of severe covid cases since delta made its way here over the past 6 weeks. Previous to that this particular ICU was ~20% covid, 60% capacity. Now it is ~90% covid, 110% capacity. This is not just because they tested positive - these are people on various levels of oxygen. They are intubating covid patients in the ER because there's no room anywhere else.

I'm in arguably the reddest state in the US where most people share your views. I'm not sure how you can say apathy toward spreading a contagious virus is not societies "fault".

PS: they are throwing truckloads of money at doctors and nurses, luckily for us.

> I'm not sure how you can say apathy toward spreading a contagious virus is not societies "fault".

Moralizing spreading an airborne highly contagious respiratory virus is one of the most toxic, dangerous things we’ve done. It’s absurd. It’s a virus. It does what it does. People catch it. It’s nobody’s fault.

The people living in your red state are perfectly fine holding their beliefs.

Opposing governmental mandates is one thing, but eschewing personal responsibility is supposed to be the antithesis of these folks worldview. It's a bit baffling, though sadly not surprising.

And to be clear, the majority of the conservatives I know personally are vaccinated and wear masks, by virtue of their belief in personal responsibility.