In my commentary “Texas WuFlu headline propaganda & what did you do last flu season?,” I pointed out that media headlines and politician demagoguery about there being more than 10,000 patients in Texas hospitals was presented to cause panic because the real story is that Texas has over 58,000 staffed hospital beds in at present. There are many more non-staffed beds in reserve.
A reader named Sandy posted this as a comment to the piece at PrattonTexas.com:
“The media and political distortions are even more inexcusable than that. Every patient coming into hospitals is tested and currently 10,457 hospitalized patients in Texas supposedly test positive for COVID-19 (that = 17.9% of staffed hospital beds).
“The public might naturally believe that this number represents patients sick with COVID-19, but that is FALSE and intentionally misleading. Texas hospitals and health departments fail to report the number of patients presenting with COVID-19 symptoms, versus those that are coming to the hospital for other medical issues and simply test positive (and many are asymptomatic or not even be sick because of the virus).
…
“Given the anecdotal reports coming from hospital workers and visitors, there is mostly likely nothing like a tsunami crisis going on inside our hospitals. Shame on the medical professionals, shame on the hospitals and public health officials, and shame on the media for more scaremongering that has become so over the top, it can only be attributed to political agenda at this point. We cannot trust any numbers we’re being given anymore.”
There are a few almost full hospitals in Texas and some with staff shortages. However Sandy is right, it’s not WuFlu patients overflowing hospitals, the WuFlu patients are nowhere even half of the patient load but the scaremongering continues.
Texas hospitals are not full with Coronavirus patients
A reader named Sandy posted this as a comment to the piece at PrattonTexas.com:
“The media and political distortions are even more inexcusable than that. Every patient coming into hospitals is tested and currently 10,457 hospitalized patients in Texas supposedly test positive for COVID-19 (that = 17.9% of staffed hospital beds).
“The public might naturally believe that this number represents patients sick with COVID-19, but that is FALSE and intentionally misleading. Texas hospitals and health departments fail to report the number of patients presenting with COVID-19 symptoms, versus those that are coming to the hospital for other medical issues and simply test positive (and many are asymptomatic or not even be sick because of the virus).
…
“Given the anecdotal reports coming from hospital workers and visitors, there is mostly likely nothing like a tsunami crisis going on inside our hospitals. Shame on the medical professionals, shame on the hospitals and public health officials, and shame on the media for more scaremongering that has become so over the top, it can only be attributed to political agenda at this point. We cannot trust any numbers we’re being given anymore.”
There are a few almost full hospitals in Texas and some with staff shortages. However Sandy is right, it’s not WuFlu patients overflowing hospitals, the WuFlu patients are nowhere even half of the patient load but the scaremongering continues.