Not true in my area. I am overwhelmed with patients in my clinic. I am still doing telemed for about 25% of the patients but the rest want to come in. This was true early on that people did not get care because of fear of covid or not wanting to take a hospital bed from someone with covid but now they are overwhelming us.
Other factors are at play. remember that the state fired 2 of the 3 state psychiatrists for the Big Island due to lack of funding the same week the legislature passed the bill funding the gun commission.
The Big Island lost 32 physicians since January, my area is down 8 physicians, they are all leaving. This state is a terrible place for a doctor to work and if we are losing physicians who are going back to the mainland during a pandemic where we have low covid numbers then there is a major problem with healthcare already in this state.
Yes the economy is terrible. But the answer isnt pretend covid does not exist and open everything up. The US is losing 4 times as many Americans a day as we did in WWII. You cant possible be someone who would look at the shift in the war economy in WWII and say "we really need to be stopping all this and open up the bars"
Hawaii does not have the healthcare system to handle covid even at the small numbers. One Honolulu hospital is already down to having 2 free ICU beds. At the current rate 2-3 weeks we will not have enough beds, and more importantly, not enough doctors to help people. Hawaii loses 200 doctors a year that are not replaced. This year is already looking worse for that number.
If we open everything up and pretend nothing is wrong and overwhelm the severely limited healthcare systems in this state then everyone who may need a hospital for any reason will be in trouble.
no they are not.
From a medical point of view what you say makes a lot of sense.
I'm not a doctor, but I suspect the losses will continue because there
is not much of a Medical community here on the BI and they just don't
get paid comparably to doctors working on the mainland.
Full disclosure; my uncle was a San Francisco area Plastic surgeon
and a past president of the local bay area AMA there.
On the Quarantine subject. I recently had to accompany my wife to Honolulu
to get her cataracts fixed(She is covered by Kaiser).
I really got tired of filling out BS forms. This straight from the STASI Former
East German police.
It reminds me of the Ben Franklin quote
"Those who would give up essential liberty, to purchase a little temporary
safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety."
I'll take my chances with liberty.
You are a doctor and know the chances of finding a vaccine for this cv19 is very
remote and you understand there is another virus in the very near
future, just as bad as this one, it too will have no vaccine.
However this state is full of Democrats that
don't have a concept of liberty, so I plan for more "quarantines" and lockdowns.
Thankfully the most of kind of businesses that will fail because of this "Temporary
safety" action are ones I don't use or need.
Doesn't help my neighbors much,
but they elected the government they want
and pay for the government they get.