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New Zealand police arrest pair trying to enter Auckland with ‘large amount’ of KFC:
The men were arrested after allegedly trying to flee from police near the Auckland border. When their car was searched, police said they found a large quantity of KFC, as well as the cash and a number of empty ounce bags.
The arrest struck a chord with New Zealanders – especially Aucklanders, who have spent a month in a strict level four lockdown that does not allow restaurants to open or residents to order takeaway food.
[...] After the KFC arrest, a police spokesperson said “officers noticed a suspicious looking vehicle travelling on a gravel road, and upon seeing the police car, the vehicle did a U-turn and sped off trying to evade police.
[...] A breach of the Covid-19 Public Health Response Act can result in imprisonment for up to six months; or a fine of up to $4,000.
The men will appear in court for breaching the health order, and police said further charges were likely.
(Score: 5, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 21 2021, @08:50PM (14 children)
Sure, hospitals run out of ER beds all the time. All at the same time. All over the place.
Don't they?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 21 2021, @08:55PM (11 children)
Yes. Bed shortage stories are literally an annual occurrence, they run these stories every year. And not everywhere, just the northern hemisphere. Australia will be strutting around pretending like it beat covid because it's warm out again in a month or so.
(Score: 2) by MostCynical on Tuesday September 21 2021, @10:05PM (10 children)
but not all the hospitals in a city, or state, at once..
"I guess once you start doubting, there's no end to it." -Batou, Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex
(Score: 0, Redundant) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 21 2021, @10:20PM (8 children)
https://www.theguardian.com/society/2019/dec/10/thousands-of-patients-die-waiting-for-beds-in-hospitals-study [theguardian.com]
"Almost 5,500 patients have died over the past three years because they have spent so long on a trolley in an A&E unit waiting for a bed in overcrowded hospitals, a study by leading NHS doctors has found. ..."
10 Dec 2019
Si COVID n'existait pas, il faudrait l'inventer.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 21 2021, @11:38PM (4 children)
I don't think you understand the argument, nor the magnitude of the problem. There's a difference between "it has happened somewhere before" and "it is happening almost everywhere at the same time."
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 21 2021, @11:43PM
I don't think your scripted response is of any relevance. You obviously had not even attempted to read the linked article.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Runaway1956 on Wednesday September 22 2021, @02:07AM (2 children)
Your brother AC is on target. Those headlines have been in the news for most of my adult life. In one year, it's New York and NYC, the next year it's Cali and LA, and another year it's all of the central midwest, then maybe it's back to New York, and the following year it's the southeast.
The fact is, hospital bed availability has been decreasing in the US for AT LEAST 40 years. The number of medical professionals has been dropping as well. The only thing that increased for some years, were EMT services, but I think those have flattened, and maybe have began decreasing.
Every crisis, great or small has strained the system, for three decades or more. Hurricanes, tornados, forest fires, airliner crash, massive automotive pileups, train derailment, factory explosion, you name it - it becomes a health care crisis. Patients are shuffled from one hospital to another, with less serious injuries being transported 100s of miles, to leave room close at hand for those who won't survive that transport.
As an experiment you might do some Google searches, playing with the dates. Search for stories prior to 1980 about hospital bed shortages, then increment your search forward in time, one decade at a time. (keep in mind that internet search results get better with every decade advance - lots of news prior to 1990 has never been archived on the internet)
Abortion is the number one killed of children in the United States.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 22 2021, @03:24AM
Don't forget that the AMA keeps a cap on things like medical student numbers per faculty, thereby reducing new entrants to the profession, while more and more senior members exit early, or divert into specialty fields which mean that their involvement in general practice drops.
It's textbook rent-seeking behaviour, with the approval of the government.
(Score: 1, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 22 2021, @02:14PM
Well that explains why it's worldwide.
(Score: 2) by epitaxial on Wednesday September 22 2021, @12:28AM (2 children)
Couldn't possibly be from the conservative parties cutting funding from the NHS...
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/oct/25/boris-johnson-conservatives-nhs-funding [theguardian.com]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 22 2021, @12:51AM (1 child)
https://www.health.org.uk/chart/chart-how-funding-for-the-nhs-in-the-uk-has-changed-over-a-rolling-ten-year-period [health.org.uk]
The real rate (i.e. inflation adjusted) has not been negative, for a very long time, if ever.
A couple of quotes:
You can also look at the most recent tax hikes specifically to support the NHS.
But this all came from some shady site called www.health.org.uk. What would they know? The Graun has informed us that there were massive cuts! That must be the truth!
Feh.
(Score: 2) by MostCynical on Wednesday September 22 2021, @07:53PM
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/This_Is_Going_to_Hurt [wikipedia.org]
"I guess once you start doubting, there's no end to it." -Batou, Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex
(Score: 2) by VLM on Wednesday September 22 2021, @03:27PM
Its interesting to look at the actual statistical data out of Alabama and ignore the propaganda for a moment.
It seems in a sense that Delta is a nothingburger because its death rate is about 1/5 that of the first disease.
But, consider, last January in the first peak of death, elderly people would enter the hospital and promptly die, letting someone else re-use that nominal bed and nursing services (well presumably they clean the sheets between patients but you know what I mean). With the nothingburger Delta variant, 4/5 of the people who would have died last Jan are kinda sitting around alive filling that bed up. That's good for the 4/5 who get to live instead of die, but they gotta move "somewhere" or else they'll clog up the system.
This is what makes the propaganda rather tiresome and meaningless; The usual shrill shriekers are going to whine regardless of fatality rate; if the rate is higher, scream about the hospitals being empty as the morgue fills up, if the rate is lower, scream that the hospital is filling up with living people instead of bodies.
Note another aspect of the propaganda, if a hospital ER fills to capacity because of covid then Orange Man Bad Hate White People, but if it fills to capacity because of illegal aliens using the ER for free medical care, that's a holy obligation we should all feel very happy to pay for in fact we need more unvax'd immigrants because we need to fire all the whites whom are unvax'd because Orange Man Bad and White Man Bad and Jew Always Good. But its still an overly full hospital ER either way.
(Score: 1, Troll) by ElizabethGreene on Tuesday September 21 2021, @09:00PM (1 child)
Yes, actually. It's very common for hospitals to run out of beds, defer ambulances to other hospitals, and have to queue patients in hallways or the "wrong" care units.
I might not be the best person for your argument though; the covid lockdown, not covid, killed my mom.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 22 2021, @12:13AM
Yes, hospitals fill up their ER beds and patients have to be diverted to other hospitals. The can even be sent to hospitals a decent distance away. But these occurrences are on isolated instances or the result of local tragic events. It is not at all common for all hospitals to be in this situation [fiercehealthcare.com] (coincidence, I'm sure, but nine of the top 10 states in that list are run by Republican governors). It isn't common for it to be common for hospitals to need refrigerated semis because the bodies are stacking up before they can be moved out.
For the other person to suggest that since the COVID mortality rate is on the order of a few percent that this is not a problem truly doesn't understand the situation and/or can't (more likely, won't as it won't give the answer they want) do simple calculations, or even just look at historical trends.
I'm sorry for the loss of your mother.