COVID-19 patients will be 'sent home to die' if deemed too sick, Texas county says

[highplainsdem]

This article is just minutes too old for LBN. I found it thanks to a tweet from MSNBC's Chris Jansing this morning:

Link to tweet

https://www.star-telegram.com/news/coronavirus/article244443257.html

Starr County once went about three weeks without a COVID-19 case at the beginning of the pandemic. It banned large gatherings, tested hundreds of residents a day, issued stay-at-home orders and required face masks — many of the same mandates now commonplace across the U.S. The poor and mostly Latino county on the Mexico border was containing COVID-19.

-snip-

But after Gov. Greg Abbott issued orders for the reopening of the state, overriding local control and decision-making, COVID-19 cases surged.

-snip-

The county has been forced to form what is being compared to a so-called “death panel.” A county health board – which governs Starr Memorial – is set to authorize critical care guidelines Thursday that will help medical workers determine ways to allocate scarce medical resources on patients with the best chance to survive.

A committee will deem which COVID-19 patients are likely to die and send them home with family, Jose Vasquez, the county health authority, said during a news conference Tuesday.

-snip-

[TexasTowelie]

1. Add in the prevalence of obesity and diabetes along with the large proportion of residents that do

not have health insurance and it leads to negative outcomes for the patients.

[LisaL]

2. And than the family will be infected as well, if it hasn't been already.

Lovely.

[highplainsdem]

5. Tragic, and practically inevitable, since they won't have anything close to medical PPE.

[dem4decades]

3. So it was a self fulfulling prophecy, Republican's death panels.

[mucifer]

4. For something that was for the most part preventable