Covid: Horror in North Dakota [View all]

[My Pet Orangutan]

North Dakota is a preview of the health System overwhelmed. With Italy, In hospitals that did not turn people away. patients were left to die of suffocation on trolleys. North Dakota has the highest rate of known Covid infections in the world.

How North Dakota became a covid-19 nightmare

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The virus is everywhere, affecting every profession and demographic. We see high case counts among health-care workers, in congregate living facilities and among hospitality workers — but the outbreak isn’t limited to these occupations. Entire offices that do not have prevention protocols in place are being wiped out by the virus.

Contact tracers have become overwhelmed. The North Dakota Department of Health recently announced the discontinuation of contact tracing, asking people who test positive to reach out to their own close contacts to notify them to quarantine. This change has likely added to covid-19’s spread across the state.

Deaths have more than doubled in the past month, and hospitals are at capacity. Rural hospitals are especially challenged. Typically, their critically ill patients are transferred to larger cities in North Dakota, which have better-resourced care facilities. But as even our larger hospitals are swamped, patients from rural areas have been sent out of state for care. Families are left behind, wondering if their loved ones will recover and return home or remain hospitalized out of state and die alone.

Health-care workers are being pushed to the brink caring for patients with no relief. Jeffrey Sather, medical director for Trinity Health’s Emergency Trauma Center in Minot, N.D., said recently that when he asks his colleagues how they’re holding up, they reveal a dreadful truth: “I have to watch someone suffocate to death, every day, and sometimes several times a day.”

... Astonishingly, there are still no statewide mitigation measures being enforced in North Dakota, leaving the task of stopping covid’s spread to local leaders. After a grueling six-hour meeting last week, the Bismarck City Commission voted 3 to 2 to approve a “pandemic mitigation strategy” requiring masks in public places and limiting social gatherings. The catch: There is no penalty for non-compliance. So while this is a step in the right direction, it won’t be enough to curb the contagion.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2020/11/06/north-dakota-covid-19-cases/

The GOP / Trump have murdered more than 100,000 Americans.