Out-Of-Hospital & Home Birth Packet - Ventura County Health Care: Fill & Download for Free

This is Elton John. You may have heard of him. Apparently, he’s an entertainer of some sort.In 1990, at the height of his wealth and popularity, playing multiple sold-out shows in major venues and recording about two albums a year, he checked himself into rehab. For almost 20 years, he had been abusing alcohol, hard drugs, prescription drugs and marijuana. He was in a dysfunctional relationship with his lover/manager and had been, how should I put this politely, “sleeping around”. A lot. He had been in and out of hospitals for these problems for years.After getting out of rehab, he cut back on his recording time to focus on songwriting, reconciled with his best friend and songwriting partner, and pretty much stopped touring. Probably cost him millions.But he found out in rehab that his life long dream of becoming a rock star hadn’t made him anything but miserable. He still loved music, just not the lifestyle that came with it. He found he was trying to compensate for an unhappy childhood where he could do nothing to get the approval of his biological parents, largely due to the fact that they both realized he was a homosexual. Eventually, he got married and he and his husband adopted a couple of kids. He’s feeling much better now and hasn’t touched booze or drugs since.

While you were performing CPR, were you a civilian bystander, a volunteer firefighter/EMT/first responder etc., or being paid as a medical professional?Typically, Good Samaritan Laws do not cover individuals being paid as medical professionals or expecting compensation for their duties. So if, for example, you were a paramedic responding to a cardiac arrest, the Good Samaritan Law would not apply to you. Things get a little gray when you get into volunteers, such as volunteer firefighters and EMTs. Every state is different and you need to look up your state’s Good Samaritan Law.If you were simply a bystander that was present at the time of the cardiac arrest and you attempted to resuscitate the individual without wilful neglect or gross negligence, you are exactly the individual this law was designed to protect. Again, everything varies by state, so make sure you check it out. Don’t ignore court orders or anything and make sure to contact an attorney.Just FYI, when I first went through Advanced Cardiac Life Support back in 2010, the American Heart Association’s statistics on out-of-hospital cardiac arrest survival rates were like 6%. Most people do not survive cardiac arrest. If you were a bystander when this happened, you did more than a lot of people would and that is commendable.

I don’t know where you live, Questioner but I live in the US, so I’m going to answer from the US perspective, but this applies to everyone. German Chancellor Angela Merkel explained this to her people quite succinctly.The Coronavirus is not being blown out of proportion when you think about things in terms of medical system capacity.COVID is dangerous not because of deaths but because of hospitalizations. Everyone is so focused on deaths and the number of people who die. What about preserving life and helping people recover?I like data, so lets look at some data. Check it out:The US has ~925,000 staffed hospital beds (this will become really important later, so hold on to this number). Babies being born, car accident victims, cancer patients, emergency surgeries, ICUs and ERs all utilize these 925,000 beds.Now lets look at some data about the flu in the US:Important bits from the triangle:1.5% percent of the people who get the flu need hospitalization, even with a vaccine in place.1% percent of the people who get the flu die, even with a vaccine in placePer the footnote, the big numbers with the stars represent the 2017–2018 flu season, even with a vaccine in placeIn case you missed it, we have a flu vaccine, of which 37% of US adults received in the 2017–2018 season.Now lets look at some current data about Coronavirus in the US:Important bits from current COVID data in the US:12% of people who get COVID need hospitalization (the “Recovered” figure shown above)~6% of people who get COVID dieNote: If you don’t like my data, I’m happy to use your data.Why does this matter?COVID is transmitted in much the same way as the flu. The COVID figures are the result of strict Stay at Home orders which have been in place, and only ~2 months of broad population exposure, compared to an entire flu season (typically 6 months) with a vaccination in place.So now let’s pretend that 10M people get infected with COVID. Consider that in the 2017–2018 season, 45M got the flu, despite 37% of US adults receiving a flu vaccination.With 10M COVID infections, you will need 1.2M hospital beds. But wait, we only have 925,000 hospital beds in the US. With 30M COVID infections, you will need 3.6M hospital beds. But wait, we only have 925,000 hospital beds in the US. We should assume that COVID exposure would be higher than the flu given the lack of vaccination options. I keep mentioning the vaccination because its important: 1 in 3 adults got a vaccination and we still had 40M flu infections.Now do you see the problem?Shift the focus from dying, to living and…At current rates of hospitalization, COVID would quickly exhaust the FULL supply of US hospital beds assuming it were all available in the first place. And this is assuming we limit exposure to the same number of people get infected with coronavirus as we do the flu in a typical flu season, despite a widely available flu vaccine. So if every bed were available (which they aren’t), you still wouldn’t have enough beds for people who need them. And the rest of life doesn’t stop. Babies are still being born which require labor and delivery staffed beds, people still get in car accidents which require ER staffed beds etc.That is why Stay At Home orders are in place.Its not because of deaths. Yes, I know more people die from the flu, heart disease, cancer, car accidents (a comparison that has never made sense to me), jay-walking and eating undercooked pasta in the US than from COVID. Deaths are not the point here.Hospitalizations are.Ok, back to reality. In reality 100% of US hospital beds are not available to direct toward COVID patients. And 100% of patients needing hospital supply do not get sick at the same time. But the point still stands:If you don’t have enough beds then you have to 1) tell medical workers how to decide who gets hospitalized and who doesn’t and 2) communicate to your populace who will get medical attention and who will not.How do you decide who gets the hospital bed when there aren’t enough to go around? For those that oppose Stay at Home orders, what are you willing to go on record and tell people about who gets a hospital bed and who doesn’t? All of those funny scenarios about a meteorite heading toward earth and only having meteorite bunker capacity for 1M Americans are now real. How do you draw straws with people’s health?People don’t like being told they can’t go to work and can’t go to Starbucks. Could you imagine people’s reaction to being told that they can’t seek medical attention??! “If your social security number ends in 8, you will be denied entry to a medical facility.”What you probably didn’t know is that the US government has been valuing lives for 4 decades and places the same value on ALL lives. The government places the same value on my life as your life, as the life of my 3 year old, Bill Gates’ life, Bruno Mars’ life and LeBron James’ life. In quantifying the value of life, in the eyes of the US government, we are all the same.So when everyone is equal, how do you decide who gets a hospital bed and who does not when you know there aren’t enough to go around?That is why the Coronavirus is different from other viral infections and things are not being blown out of proportion. This becomes evident when you shift the focus from deaths, to hospitalizations. Don’t focus on dying.Focus on living.$.02.Data Source:Fast Facts on U.S. Hospitals, 2020 | AHABurden of Influenza (CDC)Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) (CDC)Edited to add: For all those that say “at what cost”, know that the US government has actually done the math and right now the potential cost to the economy of closures is cheaper than the cost of increased exposure and transmission (source: NPR). The government has been doing this kind of math for a while (decades, since the 60s) and does this math anytime we consider a nationwide implementation/requirement of something.Edited 5/1: One of my favorite things about Quora is people who complain about the “obvious inaccuracies” and “biases” of cited data sources, but refuse (read: are unable) to provide alternative data sources supporting their position. “Almost positive”, “the people I know”, “what I’ve heard” and “they say” are not credible data sources.