That was posted in the comments to the following story this morning. More life flights have no doubt come in since then.
Maine reports 287 new COVID-19, highest daily total since mid-May
State health officials are reviewing 1,700 positive test results received earlier this week and warned that case numbers would be rising.
Maine reported 287 new cases of COVID-19 on Wednesday, the highest daily total since mid-May, and health officials expect to see more high numbers in the coming days.
“I don’t have a metaphor, I don’t have a turn of phrase. I’ll be straight with everybody: I’m concerned,” Maine Center for Disease Control and Prevention director Dr. Nirav Shah said during a press briefing Tuesday.
Two additional deaths were reported Wednesday as well…..
Maine Medical Center is Maine's only American College of Surgeons Level One verified trauma center. The MMC ED is home to Maine's only Pediatric Emergency Department.
What happens to trauma patients when Covid patients fill the beds? Will we in Maine see what is happening in Florida, Texas, Oklahoma, and Oregon here?
Frustration and anger inside an Oregon hospital overwhelmed with COVID patients
Oregon's hospitals are in crisis. Beds are filled with COVID-19 patients — more than ever before, and nearly all of them are unvaccinated. Health care workers are sounding the alarm that the current situation is untenable but still forecasted to get worse….
“There’s about a 20% mortality rate in most ICUs on any given day,” said Schulz. “But with COVID it's been much higher than that. Again, it’s all unnecessary and preventable. That’s the heartbreaking part."
"How can I give my heart when they don’t seem to care?"
Among staff who've been working the frontlines from the beginning, there is now a profound sadness and frustration that none of this needs to be happening. The vaccines against COVID-19 are extremely effective at keeping people out of the hospital, but people are still choosing not to get vaccinated.
As the fifth wave of infections continues to grow, fueled by the dangerous delta variant, some on the front lines feel exhausted and discouraged…
The story is the same across the country. Now here in Maine, hospitals across the state saw a big uptick in Covid cases over the weekend. It is not stopping.
….Both Northern Light Eastern Maine Medical Center in Bangor and Maine Medical Center in Portland have seen increases since late last week. EMMC increased from 24 COVID-19 patients last Thursday to 29 on Monday, while Maine Med increased from 13 patients Friday to 16 Monday. Waldo County General Hospital in Belfast more than doubled its COVID-19 patients, from four patients last week to nine Monday.
Along with Vermont and Massachusetts, Maine has one of the best vaccination rates in the country.
But that vaccination rate is not the same from county to county across the state. My county has a vaccination rate of 73% fully vaccinated. Waldo County has about 58 percent of its population fully immunized.
Like the rest of the country, Maine’s unvaccinated are getting sick and filling hospital beds.
Like the rest of this country’s front line health care workers — our nurses, doctors, respiratory therapists, and others on the front line of this pandemic are exhausted, traumatized — risking their health and lives for those who could not be bothered to get a free life saving shot.
My son is one of them. I am terrified for him, his co-workers, and our educators and children about to begin the school year. And I am furious. None of this needed to happen.
Over 3,700 healthcare workers have died due to Covid 19.
Each of those workers have people who love them — people who worried for them, feared for them, now left grieving with lives shattered.
So tell me why those left behind should give a damn about vaccine and mask deniers?
Why should the millions of us with loved ones on the front lines of this preventable surge filling our hospitals give a rat’s ass about those putting our wives, husbands, brothers, sisters, mothers, fathers, sons, daughters, and grandchildren at risk?
CDC Estimates of Nurse & Healthcare Worker COVID-19 Cases Are Likely Understated
In this analysis, we have shown that most states (including NY & NJ) do not report healthcare worker coronavirus infections and the last CDC estimates are woefully outdated. In any given state, 7-26% of coronavirus infections are healthcare workers. Healthcare workers are putting themselves at considerable risk of infection as they protect us from coronavirus and we should quantify just how many are getting sick…..
….Given the prevalence that 10.9% of coronavirus cases in our sample are healthcare workers, a better estimate of national healthcare worker cases in a country with over 1.54MM total cases is around 168K. This is a far cry from the CDC's estimate of nine thousand cases in early April. Clearly it's time for the CDC to update their data.
Our patience and compassion are gone, drained out over the 17 months of this pandemic, destroyed by the ongoing preventable surge.
The punditry ignores us like they ignore our exhausted and betrayed loved ones fighting to save lives in the hospitals filling up across the country.
As usual MSM is favoring its addiction to a blood sport of political false equivalencies and baseless click bait headlines.
To paraphrase the Bard — “Their sin’s not accidental, but a trade.” Measure For Measure (Act 3, Scene 1)
As usual, MSM chases after the certifiable insane, loud, and attention seeking — the woman failing to get a spoon to adhere to her body as supposed proof of Covid vaccines’ “magnetism,“ paid provocateurs protesting mask mandates, and those threatening to quit their jobs if vaccines are mandated.
Let them. Let them disappear. They have cost us far too much already.
They put our healthcare workers at risk. And now with our schools reopening, they put our educators and children at risk.
How many Educators have we lost to Covid? There is no verifiable number. There damn well should be.
As of August 24, 2021, at least 1,013 active and retired K-12 educators and personnel have died of COVID-19. Of those, 300 were active teachers.
Pediatric wards and hospitals are filling up. Delta is targeting our children while we pretend we can go back to “normal.”
This is the very definition of madness.
What is happening in one of the most vaccinated countries in the world illustrates just how mad it is.
Updated Aug. 24, 2021 7:51AM ET / Published Aug. 24, 2021 3:38AM ET
JERUSALEM—The massive surge of COVID-19 infections in Israel, one of the most vaccinated countries on earth, is pointing to a complicated path ahead for America.
In June, there were several days with zero new COVID infections in Israel. The country launched its national vaccination campaign in December last year and has one of the highest vaccination rates in the world, with 80 percent of citizens above the age of 12 fully inoculated. COVID, most Israelis thought, had been defeated. All restrictions were lifted and Israelis went back to crowded partying and praying in mask-free venues.
Fast forward two months later: Israel reported 9,831 new diagnosed cases on Tuesday, a hairbreadth away from the worst daily figure ever recorded in the country—10,000—at the peak of the third wave. More than 350 people have died of the disease in the first three weeks of August. In a Sunday press conference, the directors of seven public hospitals announced that they could no longer admit any coronavirus patients. With 670 COVID-19 patients requiring critical care, their wards are overflowing and staff are at breaking point…..
Israel — 80% fully vaccinated. And yet Delta is sending people to hospitals in record numbers.
Just what do you think is going to happen here?
USA — 51.9% fully vaccinated.
Our healthcare workers are standing in front of an oncoming train. Those who refuse to wear masks and get vaccinated put them there. The politicians who banned mask mandates and pushed anti vaccine conspiracy theories put them there. Fox “News” put them there.
Our loved ones risk their lives every damn day in order to save the unthinking, uncaring, ungrateful, and all those they have harmed.
Our healthcare professionals, our educators, are the best of us. They are our protection and hope. They can not be holding up the world alone.
Who is holding them up?
It must be us — every damn one of us.
We must organize and fight — for all their sakes.
There must be a price enacted for putting our loved ones in danger. The punditry with its addiction to “Dems in disarray” will not see it coming. They didn’t see the historic blue wave election of 2018 coming either.
Neither will the usual attention seeking pols who confuse posturing and lining their bank accounts with good governance.
DeSantis
Abbott
Noem
Ricketts
Reynolds
Ducey
the Congressional GOP and their enablers all have blood on their hands.
The anti vaxxers have blood on their hands.
Justice is coming.
None of them have any idea how furious we are or how determined.
You’ll see us at the ballot box, at school board meetings, in letters to the editors — everywhere.
We’ll stand in line for hours in order to vote. We’ll support campaigns. We’ll donate to those fighting the good fight in the courtrooms.
We’re coming for the politicians who set our world on fire with their lies and greed, the ones who put all our lives at risk. We’re coming for a main stream media who helped set the country ablaze.
It didn’t have to be this way. None of it.
And we’re going to make sure it never happens again.