As the Impeachment Farce neared its
pathetic denouement, an optimist might have expected that the virulent Trump
Derangement Syndrome infecting the MSM, the Dems and the Washington ruling
class would finally die out.
Not at all. It’s back with a vengeance,
lurking in the subtext and sotto voce of virtually every headline and utterance
from the above precincts with respect to the Covid-19.
Indeed, the entire Covid narrative is so
hideously distorted, exaggerated, mendacious and risible as to finally confirm
what’s actually been at bottom of the successive waves of RussiaGate,
UkraineGate, the Impeachment Farce, the Covid-Hysteria and now the Summer of
Race Huckstering, too.
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Namely: Orange Man Bad!
It’s
as simple and primitive as that. In the present instance, only the filter of
Orange Man Bad can possibly explain each new twist and turn of the MSM’s Covid
narrative, which has essentially degenerated into a running show trial-like
prosecution.
But
finally they have gotten so desperate and hysterical that they are just
flat-out fabricating, censoring and falsifying the evidence with respect to the
so-called second wave allegedly hitting the Sun Belt states.
Their
true purpose however, is nakedly evident. They are so infuriated about the
Donald’s claims that the virus is abating (it is) and that it’s time to reopen
America and get back to business (it really is!) that they are literally
attempting to tag him with de facto genocide.
Needless
to say, whatever is going on in Texas, Florida and Arizona, it isn’t an
eruption of the Black Plague, even if you extrapolate the current elevated
level of “positives” for several months into the future.
So
let us go back to the basics. Even in the worst hit precincts of New York City,
there never was a random sample Grim Reaper marauding through the general
population. The very bad numbers of cases and deaths coming from the five
boroughs were overwhelmingly the product of a catastrophic mismanagement of
nursing and other long-term care homes and other abandoned elderly already
afflicted with life-threatening morbidities.
But
even then, when you compare the case and death rates per 100,000 for NYC’s
three most rotten boroughs – the Bronx, Queens and Brooklyn – with what is
happening in the major Texas cities, for instance, it’s not the same zip code
or even the same planet.
Covid Cases/Deaths Per 100,000 Persons as of June 27:
Bronx: 3,346/234;
Queens: 2,867/222;
Brooklyn: 2,345/198;
Queens: 2,867/222;
Brooklyn: 2,345/198;
Houston: 567/7.;
Dallas: 696/13;
Fort Worth: 500/10;
San Antonio: 423/5;
Austin: 549/9;
Dallas: 696/13;
Fort Worth: 500/10;
San Antonio: 423/5;
Austin: 549/9;
The media drumbeat in recent days has especially focused on the alleged
surge of new cases in Houston/Harris County, featuring the same old
hoary prediction of overflowing hospitals and ICUs that turned out not to be
true even in NYC – except for a few hospitals at the epicenter of the pandemic
in the Bronx for a few peak weeks in March/April.
Yet just like in the case of the
flooded NYC hospitals myth, the readily accessible facts with respect to Texas
and Houston refute this weekend’s media blitz entirely.
And they also underscore the
everlasting laziness and servility of the MSM. After all, if you start with a
positive case rate per 100,000 in Houston that is currently only 17% of that recorded for the Bronx and a death
rate that is only 3% of what
occurred in the Bronx, why in the world would you even think that Houston is
teetering on the edge of a medical calamity?
That’s
especially the case if you happen to have the basic knowledge that Houston
sports one of the great medical complexes of the entire world. That is, it’s a
health care rich community experiencing only a tiny fraction of the Covid case
load that happened in NYC.
Beyond
that, we are no longer in the horse and buggy age, obviously. Given that
patients can be reallocated to other communities if need be, the relevant
hospital capacity is not just Houston’s, but capacity in other places around
the state that are not experiencing the same level of Covid case increases now
occurring in Houston.
So here are the statewide facts: As of June 25, Texas had 54,700 staffed acute care hospital beds, but
only 41,950 were being used, implying a occupancy rate of just 76.7% and 12,750 empty beds still
available.
Moreover, only about 5,000 beds representing 12% of the current census were occupied by
confirmed or suspected Covid patients. So as of June 25 the state had
nearly 2.5X more empty hospital
beds than it had Covid patients, notwithstanding the surge of new cases and
hospitalizations during the month of June.
In fact, that’s not the half of it.
Owing to seasonal factors, the number of empty hospital beds has actually been
rising during the spring months even in the face of the soaring Covid caseload.
That’s right. On March 18, Texas had 46,550 occupied
hospital beds, reflecting an occupancy rate of 85% or well above the 76.7% level as of June 25.
But
back in March virtually none of these occupied beds were attributable to Covid
patients. That’s because at that point there had been only be 83 confirmed
Covid cases and 2 deaths reported for the entire state!
By
then what happened over the next three months, as the Covid caseload built up
from zero to the present 5,000, is that even more beds emptied out due to:
- state
orders prohibiting elective surgeries and other treatments;
- normal
seasonal declines in occupancy; and
- aggressive
reclassification of patients admitted for other reasons as Covid patients.
As to the latter point, it seems that Texas health officials started
logging every single COVID-19-positive patient in the state as a COVID-19
hospitalization, even if the patients themselves were admitted seeking treatment for something other than the
coronavirus.
As
Lindsey Rosales, a spokesman for the Texas Department of Public Health
Services, confirmed recently to an independent investigator:
“The number of hospitalized
patients includes patients with a lab-confirmed case of COVID-19 even
if the person is admitted to the hospital for a different reason,” Rosales
said.
Moreover,
nearly everyone admitted for some other medical condition – and presumably
asymptomatic for Covid – gets tested for Covid-19 before other treatments or
surgeries are permitted:
Texas Health Resources, one of
the state’s largest hospital systems, says on its websitethat its “patients
[are] tested before most procedures.” Elective surgeries and other
medical procedures in Texas have gone up in recent weeks as the state has
gradually re-opened following its lockdown.
In other words, the first wave of Lockdowns
created a huge backlog of demand for elective surgeries and other discretionary
treatments, which were banned by state authorities. But once those bans were
lifted and people got in the hospital for deferred treatments, they were tested
for Covid and became the statistical gruel for the so-called second wave.
But even then, the Texas hospital statistics over the last three months
make mincemeat out of the national media’s weekend narrative that Texas
hospitals will soon be overflowing into the hallways. To wit, here is the trend
of unused acute care beds in the Texas hospital
system:
- 3/18: 8,155;
- 4/1: 18,411;
- 4/15: 21,489;
- 4/29: 19,432;
- 5/20: 16,035;
- 5/27: 15,315;
- 6/3: 15,219;
- 6/10: 13,271;
- 6/17: 14,993;
- 6/25: 12,571
In short, Texas had gone from virtually no Covid cases or deaths on
March 18 to 131,917 cases and 2,296 deaths by June 25, but it actually
had 56% more empty hospital beds on the latter
date!
You
can’t make this stuff up. The MSM is so intoxicated by Orange Man Bad that it
has essentially turned journalism into a kangaroo court of juvenile
imprecations.
Nor are we attempting to
deceptively drown the case in statewide averages. As of last week, the Houston
area alone had 12,458 staffed acute care
beds (23% of the statewide total), but 2,675 or
21% of these were empty; and on top of that they had an additional surge
capacity of another 925 beds.
That’s
especially salient because the rise in cases in Texas and Houston has generally
been among a much younger population than earlier in the pandemic, and the need
has been for exactly these kinds of general beds, not ICU beds.
So the fact is, as of last
week the Houston area hospitals had just 795 lab confirmed Covid patients,
representing just 8% of their
9,785 daily census. That also means that given Houston’s 3,600 beds of
remaining surge capacity, they could actually accommodate a 4X increase in their current Covid caseload.
As it
happened, even the leadership of the Houston health care community finally had
enough from CNN, NBC, and the rest of the Covid Calamity Howlers, and struck
back this weekend with a resounding denial of this spurious crisis narrative.
For
instance, the CEO of one Houston’s leading hospitals, Memorial Hermann, pulled
no punches:
We actually still think we have
plenty of capacity to meet the demand for Covid, as well as non-Covid patients.
We’re always busy in the summertime, and what we’re seeing now is a typical
summer for us.
Callender, whose not-for-profit
health system has 17 hospitals in the Houston area, stressed
that the medical network’s capacity is “constantly in flux” and needing to be
managed. “But right now, we’re able to do that very well,” he said.
“Across our system, we have
about 4,000 beds that we can bring into play” for intensive care, he said.
“Right now, only about 30% are being utilized for Covid care, so we still have
plenty of capacity for Covid patients as well as patients who need
hospitalization for other illnesses.”
Doctors and nurses also have
learned how to better treat Covid-19 patients after three months of its
presence, said Callender, who joined Memorial Hermann in 2019.
“We’re seeing a slightly lower
rate in terms of the number of typical hospital bed patients who convert to a
need for ICU hospitalization. We’re also using ventilators less frequently,” he
said. “We have more drugs at our disposable that we know help limit the
severity and duration of the illness. So overall we’re faring better than we
did just a couple months ago.”
Likewise, chimed in Dr. Marc
Boom, President and CEO of another leading institution, Houston Methodist:
The number of hospitalizations
are “being misinterpreted,” said Houston Methodist CEO Marc Boom, “and, quite
frankly, we’re concerned that there is a level of alarm in the community that
is unwarranted right now.”
“We do have the capacity to
care for many more patients, and have lots of fluidity and ability to manage,”
Boom said.
Boom pointed out that his
hospital one year ago was also at 95% ICU
capacity – long before Covid was a thing!
That’s
right. Apparently, 95% utilization of the ICU is a typical June condition, not
the sign of the Covid Apocalypse. And contrary to the heated headlines on the
MSM, only about 25% of Houston’s fully occupied ICU’s are accounted for by
Covid patients.
Again
from Boom:
It is completely normal for us
to have ICU capacities that run in the 80s and 90s,” he said. “That’s how all
hospitals operate.”
…..the hospital “[has] many
levers in our ability to adjust our ICU,” he said, claiming that the hospital
capacity regularly reported by the media is “base” capacity rather than
surge capacity.
Boom also alluded to hospitals’
ability to turn regular beds into ICU beds as well as to turn recovery, and
pre- and post surgical areas into ICU areas if needed as a kind of coronavirus
“flex area.”
Specifically,
there are about 2,200 ICU beds in the Houston service area, but another 500
beds could be added to this after such planned for conversions and
re-purposings. And Boom also pointed out an even more salient point:
Boom said overall, hospitals are
seeing younger COVID-19 patients, who stay for a shorter period of time, and
fewer deaths. Houston Methodist CEO Dr. Marc Boom told CNBC on Monday that the
demographics of the outbreak have “flipped” and that the mostly-younger people
arriving in the state’s hospitals often don’t require ICU beds, even though
many do get very sick.
Finally, there was this rebuke to the smirking CNN anchor, who on
Saturday had been bemoaning that the situation was allegedly so desperate that
a Houston children’s hospital had been drafted into Covid service at great risk
to the children.
Not at all, according to Mark Wallace,
Texas Children’s Hospital president and CEO. Actually, this was just part of
the systems’ surge plan:
Texas Children’s started accepting adult COVID-19 positive patients
this week and is currently operating at a 74 percent ICU
occupancy, Wallace said.
“We have the ability to take care of all of the Houstonians that need a
critical care environment, that need to be operated on, or acute care,” Wallace
said.
As we said, the MSM, the Dems and the
Washington ruling class are literally rabid with Orange Mad Bad.
The recent ballyhooed Covid surge and
hospital capacity crisis in Texas is just one more case in point.
Reprinted with permission
from David Stockman’s Contra Corner.
Former
Congressman David A. Stockman was Reagan's OMB director, which he wrote about
in his best-selling book, The Triumph of Politics. His latest books
are The Great Deformation: The Corruption of Capitalism in
America and Peak Trump: The Undrainable Swamp And The Fantasy Of MAGA.
He's the editor and publisher of the new David Stockman's Contra Corner. He was
an original partner in the Blackstone Group, and reads LRC the first thing
every morning.
Copyright © David Stockman
