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LA: Ambulance crews to not transport patients with little chance of survival

latimes.com

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Re: LA: Ambulance crews to not transport patients with little chance of survival

#11

Post by trhway »

crx07 wrote: post #4
tsjq wrote: post #2

Euthanasia ?

What are they supposed to do? Sometimes dealing with reality involves some pretty uncomfortable choices to make, even when that essentially makes you the bad guy. The real issue here is that the economy was prematurely reopened before it was safe -- we have far more than enough money as a nation to have prevented this scenario from happening and chose a path of destruction out of sheer avarice instead.

>we have far more than enough money as a nation

to for example open more beds in preparation for the second wave (which was obvious to come). Instead hospitals were laying off people in the summer.

Re: LA: Ambulance crews to not transport patients with little chance of survival

#12

Post by danhak »

crx07 wrote: post #4
tsjq wrote: post #2

Euthanasia ?

What are they supposed to do? Sometimes dealing with reality involves some pretty uncomfortable choices to make, even when that essentially makes you the bad guy. The real issue here is that the economy was prematurely reopened before it was safe -- we have far more than enough money as a nation to have prevented this scenario from happening and chose a path of destruction out of sheer avarice instead.

There are many factors at play, but in L.A. I don't believe premature reopening is one of them. Bars, indoor dining and gyms have been shut down for pretty much the whole pandemic. Outdoor dining was banned (again) about a month ago.

My take is that L.A.'s issues have more to do with housing density, high number of people living with roommates and high number of multigenerational households. Also perhaps some some challenges communicating with an extremely large and diverse immigrant population.

Re: LA: Ambulance crews to not transport patients with little chance of survival

#13

Post by remote_phone »

Regardless of politics, I think places like LA need to institute a full lockdown. No one leaves their house except to go to the grocery store and pharmacy. No one leaves more than 2 miles away from their residence. It should be enforced by the military. Essentially martial law. It’s not something I suggest lightly. But 6-8 weeks of complete lockdown and pay people to stay home. It’s the only way that California is going to survive this.

Yes, I know that the death rate is low, ~0.2%. But when hospitals are full like this we need to have a circuit breaker and the only thing we have is a full, military-enforced lockdown. We should also stop all traffic on the highways. Set up tanks on the I-5 and 101 and turn people back. We have to stop this uncontrolled catastrophe.

Re: LA: Ambulance crews to not transport patients with little chance of survival

#15

Post by crx07 »

danhak wrote: post #12
crx07 wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What are they supposed to do? Sometimes dealing with reality involves some pretty uncomfortable choices to make, even when that essentially makes you the bad guy. The real issue here is that the economy was prematurely reopened before it was safe -- we have far more than enough money as a nation to have prevented this scenario from happening and chose a path of destruction out of sheer avarice instead.

There are many factors at play, but in L.A. I don't believe premature reopening is one of them. Bars, indoor dining and gyms have been shut down for pretty much the whole pandemic. Outdoor dining was banned (again) about a month ago. My take is that L.A.'s issues have more to do with housing density, high number of people living with roommates and high number of multigenerational households. Also perhaps some some ch…

LA is one of the most connected cities in the world. It's not LA's fault necessarily, but the country as a whole should've been on complete lockdown from April until whenever the situation was under control. Our national wealth and GDP have plenty of room for a complete quarantine, even if that means paying everyone's paychecks for a year or longer. We deliberately chose to allow 350,000+ peoples lives to end instead.

Re: LA: Ambulance crews to not transport patients with little chance of survival

#16

Post by sneak »

harikb wrote: post #14

> Patients who are not to be transported to hospitals include those whose hearts have stopped and, despite efforts at resuscitation, have no signs of breathing, movement, a pulse or blood pressure and would be declared dead at the scene.

Who else does it include? This statement sounds like weasel words to calm people down about what is plainly an unacceptable situation.

Re: LA: Ambulance crews to not transport patients with little chance of survival

#17

Post by burnthrow »

remote_phone wrote: post #13

Regardless of politics, I think places like LA need to institute a full lockdown. No one leaves their house except to go to the grocery store and pharmacy. No one leaves more than 2 miles away from their residence. It should be enforced by the military. Essentially martial law. It’s not something I suggest lightly. But 6-8 weeks of complete lockdown and pay people to stay home. It’s the only way that California is go…

> It’s not something I suggest lightly.

Anonymous HN comments lack a certain gravitas.

Re: LA: Ambulance crews to not transport patients with little chance of survival

#18

Post by highmastdon »

baggy_trough wrote: post #6

https://www.quora.com/What-is-the-current-treatment-for-Covi...

This is great. Of the effectiveness is a as good in the long run, we don’t even need a vaccine since it’s no longer a high risk disease. It’ll be a flu like vaccination where elderly and at-risk people can be using it

Re: LA: Ambulance crews to not transport patients with little chance of survival

#19

Post by throw473388 »

nnx wrote: post #5

Why are some proven simple yet _useful_ preventative measures not taken? Like, promoting self blood oxygen monitoring with those (cheap!) finger oxymeter devices for all at-risk persons... This would avoid lots of late emergency calls in critical condition due to silent hypoxia that developed in them for days/weeks...

Please, next time you will tell people to exercise and not to be morbidly obese.

BTW read the article, it talks about already dead people with no pulse.

Re: LA: Ambulance crews to not transport patients with little chance of survival

#20

Post by jchonphoenix »

danhak wrote: post #12
crx07 wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What are they supposed to do? Sometimes dealing with reality involves some pretty uncomfortable choices to make, even when that essentially makes you the bad guy. The real issue here is that the economy was prematurely reopened before it was safe -- we have far more than enough money as a nation to have prevented this scenario from happening and chose a path of destruction out of sheer avarice instead.

There are many factors at play, but in L.A. I don't believe premature reopening is one of them. Bars, indoor dining and gyms have been shut down for pretty much the whole pandemic. Outdoor dining was banned (again) about a month ago. My take is that L.A.'s issues have more to do with housing density, high number of people living with roommates and high number of multigenerational households. Also perhaps some some ch…

I'll point you to Hong Kong, Singapore, Shanghai, and Tokyo as counterexamples. All of those cities are 3-7x denser than LA, more populous, and culturally multigenerational.

I think it's quite clear to anyone who's been paying attention at this point that behavior has more to do with containment than anything else. The US and perhaps LA in particular for some reason or another is unwilling or unable to implement the same behavioral safety measures of other countries and cultures.

Mask wearing is the obvious one. If you go to any of those 4 cities I mentioned, 100% of individuals in public are masked, whether indoors or outdoors. 6ft social distance is very strictly followed with public shaming for those that take off their masks or do not follow social distancing guidelines in public.

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