The sentence in the article that I highlighted is something to consider and an eye opener. I live in FL and this is tourist season. Our hospitals are already over maximum capacity. We already have patients who come in through emergency who need beds and there not any available -- many are being sent home after waiting for hours in the E.R. and those that they decide to admit are left on beds in hallway until a bed in room becomes available. The medical staff is stretched and already exhausted. Even a handful of corona patients that need to be isolated will be a tremendous burden on our local hospitals. We already had a patient die and another critical -- staff is being quarantined .... so that already puts additional stress on medical staff that's not affected as they have to pick up the slack for those being quarantined! So ... they may have to begin to make judgement calls -- do they treat the elderly who have a higher mortality rate and waste resources and risk infecting medical staff -- or are they going to care for the woman who just came in to deliver a baby or save someone in their 20's or 30's that has non-corona pneumonia who will more than likely recover?
'It's not like flu': Doctor's warning to those underestimating coronavirusIt’s a dismissive comment uttered, sometimes without much thought, among circles of friends or on social media.
But as the coronavirus reaches a critical point outside of China, simply passing off coronavirus as a ‘flu-like’ outbreak is a naive move, doctors and virologists have warned.
In Italy in particular, where the country’s health system has been stretched to its limit with an outbreak of more than 10,000 cases, the impact of the virus is not to be underestimated. In a now-viral tweet, one woman in northern Italy warned the country had made a “big mistake†in the lead-up to the outbreak in the European epicentre which has sent its death toll soaring beyond 600.
He noted how “advanced†medical teams in countries where the outbreak has soared have been forced to make the decision on whether patients live or die due to a lack of beds or staff to cope with “the sheer overwhelming number of sick people.â€https://www.yahoo.com/news/its-not-just-another-flu-doctors-warning-to-those-underestimating-coronavirus-220203586.html