Op-Ed: RSV is packing hospitals with sick kids, but it can be contained
Updated October 4, 2017
A medical staff member carries a bedding sheet on the floor during a bed bug infestation at a nursing home in Brooklyn, New York July 22, 2011. (Seth Wenig/AP)
Hospitals are in trouble. They’re understaffed and overburdened. Their patients are suffering. This is the situation we now face regarding the coronavirus pandemic, and the one the rest of the world is only weeks away from ending.
While there is much speculation on how the coronavirus was spread across the globe, little is known about who may have been behind it. A major public health threat, its origins and spread have been left to speculation. All of this has a major impact on how hospitals will be able to cope with the pandemic, and if they’re even able to cope.
We know who has the most experience treating COVID-19 cases in hospitals, and it’s their employees.
They’re also, increasingly, the one type of staff hospital administrators and hospital boards are most reluctant to have over run with their patients.
Their presence is very much part of the problem when it comes to a serious issue in hospitals like this one. But it is also a symptom of a much bigger, much more important, problem which we need to fix. It’s one that has been going on in hospitals for years.
The problem stems from a systemic imbalance in our health care system. It’s not a new problem by any means. We’ve had to deal with it for over half a century.
What is new is that we have to fix it.
We need to put in place a system that allows hospitals to treat patient cases with the same degree of care as any other hospital. We need to ensure that we have enough doctors and nurses to be able to care for the number of patients the
