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Originally Posted by nito
As stated, older age groups and those with pre-existing conditions will be more susceptible to succumbing to the virus because their weaker immune systems are less able to mobilise an effective response. I think some are failing to see the wood for the trees, irrelevant of age or condition, any loss of life where preventable is unacceptable.
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The "it's their immune system" thing is only part of it and when you're talking about 90+ individuals, maybe the least of it. These people have very tenuous respiratory and circulatory systems as well. It doesn't take a lot of the sort of stress that COVID causes to just cause multiple system failure.
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That the number of victims in the US who have succumbed to Covid-19 within the 25-34 age group is similar to the toll from 9/11 shouldn't be seen as insane or fear mongering, but a dire perspective of the inadequate response to this disaster. This isn’t even a problem unique to the US, the UK and countless other so-called developed countries have failed their citizens. The shambolic response to this crisis is going to have ramifications lasting decades.
”Told to rest and drink lots of water” , this is a poor attempt at comedy surely…
The NHS is far from being a utopian healthcare service provider and it has significant issues to resolve, but this ”mediocre” system ends up with average life expectancies 3 years above of those in the US, despite per capita healthcare expenditure being a staggering 2.3x higher in the US. Those exorbitant medical costs are inflated out of all proportion, even for basic drugs and procedures. Those same excessive costs and grossly inefficient medical insurance sector probably go a long way to explaining why medical costs are the leading contributor behind bankruptcies in the US are; a staggering half a million families per annum.
If this crisis has demonstrated anything, it is when you strip the politics out and let the NHS get on with managing healthcare - as it is with the Covid-19 vaccination programme - it excels. The UK is third in the world for vaccinations (33.0 per 100 people); far ahead of most of Europe and a third higher than the US.
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People who don't live in the US, and even many who do, simply don't understand the place.
It's a huge country with huge empty places--places where the nearest little community hospital may be hundreds of miles away and there may be no doctor at all. I once was sent by the state of Florida to staff a little clinic in a house trailer in a part of the state where there were no practicing doctors in 4 adjacent counties (and, of course, no hospital). Florida is not one of our most rural states. There are even very affluent communities--one I can think of is among the homes of the Walton family who own Walmart--that have pretty rudimentary medical services. In the case I'm thinking of, if you need real specialty care you have to be FLOWN out to get it.
The simple remoteness of medical care and the lack of sophistication about medical matters in some portions of the population accounts for a lot of the lower life expectancy rates IMHO. COVID is an example--anyone who has COVID needing hospitalization and showing up at a capable hospital is going to be provided care regardless of insurance or other ability to pay. But if you don't HAVE a local hospital or if you are stubborn and think you can tough it out, you won't get care.
As far as the treatment given people for whom cost or accessibility is not any issue, in the case of COVID, in the early days, there wasn't much unless you needed mechanical respiratory support. People need to accept that even with modern science, we don't have specific therapies for everything and especially in the case of entirely new diseases, it often takes a while to understand the pathophysiology well enough to know what to do for them. Actually, the learning curve with COVID has been very steep. Consider that in ONE YEAR we have effective monoclonal antibody therapies (and one of the scandals is those aren't being used enough), multiple highly effective vaccines and we understand the role the immune system plays in the disease and how to modify it much better than we did a year ago. Far from having to be embarrassed, the biomedical sciences of today have a lot to be very proud about.
Where there has been failure has been where most of us would have expected: The economics of it all. In countries like the UK, governments have simply been too parsimonious with their medical systems. In countries like the US, in order to avoid what Americans see as Brave New Worldish government control, a creaky and wasteful system of payment has been created (although, remarkably, we have a parallel system for the elderly called Medicare that works very well yet we refuse to extend it to everybody).