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Baker says stay home; peak could come around April 20; state to get some more ventilators
By adamg on Fri, 04/10/2020 - 3:34pm
Gov. Baker won't institute a mandatory stay-home order, but had a simple message for residents today: "Stay home."
Baker said that applies even, perhaps especially, on Easter:
"This will be the first Easter I haven't spent with either my mom or dad in at least 50 years. It's cruel that at a time when we need hugs the most, staying apart is the most important thing we can do with one another," he said at his daily press conference, adding "We have to keep on "beating cruelty with love."
"Confront fear with faith," he said. Also: "Please stay home." But if you do go out, wear a mask, he said: "No sitting around at the beach, no backyard cookouts with friends."
He added that state officials do act when they learn of people not social distancing, such as at state beaches, many of which have had their parking lots and spaces shut.
Baker said latest models show that Massachusetts could reach peak corona closer to April 20, and that they show the state reaching 2,500 or so new cases a day then. Yesterday, he said, the state had 2,150 new cases. He added that the state's Covid-19 death rate is 2.7%, lower than seen elsewhere, "but it's growing."
Baker said that new field hospitals now open in Worcester and South Boston, coupled with efforts hospitals have taken, means Massachusetts now has about 14,500 ICU and acute-care hospital beds, up from about 11,000 in the days before anybody had heard of Covid-19. New field hospitals should open in the next week in the Merrimack Valley and on the Cape, he said.
Hospital capacity is "manageable right now," but "the health care system will be stretched like never before" soon, he said, predicting the state will face a very rough three to four weeks - especially because people are not going to stop having heart attacks and other non-Covid-19 problems that can't be ignored.
He later added, "If you want something to pray for this weekend, pray for the families and neighbors and friends who are going to be working their way through this surge over the next several weeks" - healthcare workers, patients and essential workers. Baker was pretty riled up as he said this, possibly because a reporter asked him a question about something other than Covid-19, but it's hard to tell because he never repeats questions for people who aren't in the same room with him.
The state is seeking medical volunteers to help with all those extra beds. Some 4,000 have already signed up, but more needed, at maresponds.org - state is also hiring medical professionals for field hospitals.
Health and Human Services Secretary Marylou Sudders said that FEMA has notified Massachusetts it will be getting 200 more federally stockpiled ventilators early next week, although she said she won't believe it until she sees them in a state warehouse. With the 100 the state had previously gotten, that would bring the state to a bit less than a third of the new ventilators the feds had once promised Massachusetts.
Kate Walsh, CEO of Boston Medical Center, said her facility has taken numerous steps to prepare, including canceling all elective and routine daily walk-in care - and moving all pediatric patients to Children's Hospital so that those rooms could be re-used for adults.
"I'm hopeful that we can beat the odds on this," thanks to strong leadership by Baker and Marty Walsh, strong adherence to social distancing by Mass. residents and hard work by hospital staffers, she said.
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Comments
If you work for Gov Baker please ask him to repeat the questions
Those of us watching online or on tv can not hear the reporters' questions. Thus Baker's answers are sometimes incomprehensible. We need better communication from the governor on these serious, sometimes life and death, issues.
Update April 11- We still can not hear the questions
Watching Baker's press conference in Somerville online right now. He is still not repeating the questions and we still can not hear the questions. Apparently he doesn't care.
Baker just said "the answer is yes in both cases" . What was the friggin question Charlie?
Cool
It's nice to see that the tax hike that Romney forced on me 10 years ago that Baker has kept up to help his friends make money, including the extra $254 I've been charged this year for not buying a service that I don't want, appears to finally actually be put to use to help others get medical care. No joke.
Maybe when this is over, my question "What part of the ACA allocates funds to getting more hospitals built and more people trained to be doctors?" will finally, after all these years, get a more intelligent answer than "You should have insurance because what if you get sick?"
The reason you should get insurance...
The ACA is not about getting hospitals built or about getting people trained to be doctors, it's about covering the costs of your medical care if you get sick.
The reason you should get insurance is that you aren't the kind of free-riding, selfish pig who would want to stick me with the costs of your care if you get sick, so rather than sticking me with the bill (because I'll cover your bill rather than leaving you to die in the street without care), you choose instead to carry your own weight.
You're making my point
What part of anything you've seen or read in the news in the last month makes you think that anything about the economics of American medicine aren't broken?
What greater empirical evidence do you want or need than Boston, perhaps the greatest city on the planet for medicine, treating its sick at a (expletive) convention hall?
And yet, your reply is precisely the same glib nonsense I railed against in the first place. That it's been upvoted 2.5 to 1 over my comment is a perfect microcosm of why this country sucks: I refute dated idea with evidence of why it's dated, response is exact same dated idea.
Enjoy your Joe Biden, everyone. Maybe he'll actually soil himself mid-presser. Would still be beneath "We begin bombing Russia in 10 minutes" in presidential humor.
There's An Unprecedented Outbreak
If there were enough hospitals to cover the temp ones, wouldn't there just be empty beds all the time when there was no virus? 3500 permanent empty beds doesn't sound economically sound at all. It's a good thing we have the capacity to make field hospitals.
So democratic socialism then?
Like Denmark or Norway? Sounds good, I agree Will, let's pay more taxes to get better services.
Not what it’s for
“Romney-Care” and the ACA aren’t about getting hospitals built, quite the opposite. Lower healthcare costs occur when care takes place at the right times in the right settings for more of the population. Health insurance gets people access to primary care, specialists, and outpatient care that keeps them out of the hospital. The great adjustment for hospitals over the last decade and the next is gaining comfort with reimbursement models that incent empty beds because the system is keeping more people healthy.
An analogy: to get across town you can take public transportation for a few bucks, or a taxi for $20. That’s primary care and network outpatient care. Now, going to the ER is like renting a limo with a stripper driving.
When people have insurance and they get into their doc / specialists to stay healthy or get in to office when they start feeling sick. When they don’t, they stick it out until they can’t function, then land at the hospital. And via Medicaid, we all get the bill for the limo / stripper rate healthcare.
If you want doctors...
The ACA is not what is going to train more of them. If you want more doctors you want:
1. Ease licensing restrictions between states, so a doctor in Ohio can practice in Mass or anywhere else (many states are doing this finally due to Coronavirus)
2. Lower education requirements to be licensed as a doctor. The US has the most stringent requirements in the world, but we do not have exclusivity to good doctors. This is part of the anti-competitive stranglehold the AMA and other trade groups/unions have on US healthcare
3. Ease up on liability and lawsuits. We've tilted too far in one direction, and it de-incentivizes people to go into general practice as opposed to more speciality areas
4. Boost immigration to get more doctors from countries that almost specialize in producing them like the Philippines, who would more than love to come here and make US money practicing their craft (same goes for daycare and any other occupation that has become prohibitively expensive due to restrictions on immigration)
Other general things US healthcare needs:
1. End fee for service, it incentivizes unnecessary care. Let's get back to more subscription type plans for good health outcomes like there used to be before the AMA colluded with big insurance to create the mess of third party payments we have today.
2. Less third party payments! Insurance should be for catastrophe, not routine care. More out of pocket expenses so there can be downward pressure on prices due to consumer sensitivity that is totally lacking with our third party payment system.
3. Price transparency. Expose that one place charges $40k while another charges $7k for equivalent procedures. Businesses are finally coming around to this and exerting more control over where patients get treated. This will be good in the long run. Walmart leads the way.
4. More minute clinics, again Walmart is one of the leaders on delivering low cost care.
5. End the business tax subsidy that has killed the individual market. Possibly the original sin of all US healthcare woes (thanks to FDR's dumb wage and price controls)
6. Let nurses do more of the work, they're extremely qualified to carry out routine care
7. Strike down the certificate of needs laws that allow one hospital in a state to prevent other hospitals from opening up and competing with them. These laws are under the guise of not straining one hospitals resources, but this just leads to total lack of accountability and it is simply an absurd thing that we allow hospitals to do like they are some kind of noble exception to fundamental incentives of everyone working in them to keep more of the pie to themselves
Too bad almost no candidate wants to pursue an agenda like this, and instead on the one hand complains how much the US spends on healthcare yet their solution tends to consolidate and increase spending even more (hello, Mr. Sanders)
It would sure be cheaper to make these reforms than try to predict how trillions more in spending and rules will go, but thats the politician's way!
I agree on many of your
I agree on many of your points, but fail to see how any of it can't work alongside M4A. We're lagging the majority of other well off countries in not covering all our people, so that no one gets stuck with thousands upon thousands of dollars in debt when they get cancer or have a heart attack or need any emergency care at all.
Not to mention our health outcomes are worse in many ways. Why are we paying more and getting less? Why are women more likely to die after giving birth in the US than a LOT of other countries that have more affordable care?
Done right, it won't have to cost much more. Getting rid of the leeches and liars that are insurance companies, cutting out the insane amount of administration needed to maintain the tangled web of insurance billing, etc. etc.
But at the end of the day, even if it does cost trillions, I'm still on board because it's the right thing to do. I'd happily put all my taxes towards that instead of another endless war and our overinflated military.
Third-party payers seem to be
Third-party payers seem to be doing a great job at keeping medical care prices down. They negotiate a much better rate than I could with a doctor.
For example, when I see a specialist, the sticker price including the facility fee is about $200, and they negotiate the price down to $80, of which $60 is my copay and they pay $20. So the insurance discount is the main benefit to me. The part they actually pay is almost inconsequential.
"a service I don't want."
You not paying for insurance puts the costs of the rest of us when you need to be rescued from out of your car, med-evac'd to the city and kept alive by machines just long enough for Mrs.The Tulip to get your affairs in order.
People like you should really be required to have DNR printed in BIG LETTERS on their licenses.
Ventilators seem to be freeing up.
"Health and Human Services Secretary Marylou Sudders said that FEMA has notified Massachusetts it will be getting 200 more federally stockpiled ventilators early next week, although she said she won't believe it until she sees them in a state warehouse. With the 100 the state had previously gotten, that would bring the state to a bit less than a third of the new ventilators the feds had once promised Massachusetts."
“By this point this week we thought we’d be seeing 300 or more people each day, more people each day, who needed a ventilator. Now it’s about 100 people more each day and that might even be going down,” de Blasio said on Fox 5’s “Good Day.”
https://nypost.com/2020/04/08/de-blasio-nyc-only-using-fraction-of-venti...
Seattle is taking down the army field hospital they had set up. New York's ventilator requirements seem to be lessening. Good news all around. Maybe we're reaching the point of where social distancing is producing tangible results.
Interesting numbers and graphs for Washington state:
https://www.doh.wa.gov/emergencies/coronavirus?fbclid=IwAR3GhYupFJ2JYv55...
In some places, yes.
It's working and that's why we can't stop yet.
Places like Alabama are gonna see NY's success and instead of waiting until it all works out, will deem it a "liberal conspiracy" and be back to work by June.
Then fall comes and it explodes.
April 20
A day that we should be celebrating, but can't, whether in Lexington and Concord or along the Marathon route.
Baker's melodrama meant to distract from real scandals
Did the BMC's Kate Walsh say only the hopeful words in the quotations or did she really omit President Trump from the politicians she singled out? It's hard to tell which of the words in the box are actually hers. I would hate to see real medical administrators politicizing this as much as Governor Baker has in his fragile, melodramatic response. Baker said hospital capacity is "manageable right now." Was it ever not manageable? Did Kate Walsh contrast how bad it would have been if President Trump hadn't implemented the early China travel ban for which Mayor Walsh's endorsed candidate branded Trump xenophobic? These questions
areused to be Journalism 101.The US Attorney and Attorney General Maura Healey have announced investigations with potential criminal charges in the 26 deaths at the Baker-run Holyoke Soldiers Home. Has Baker been asked if he has retained outside counsel for his own defense or will state lawyers be used? Will the Baker-Polito donor in charge of the atrocity be indemnified (state paid lawyers) or will he have to pay for his own counsel?
With Boston facing a quarter to half billion dollar tab to build a new Long Island Bridge, did either Baker or Walsh ask Trump to send the Army Corps to do it for free? If not, they should finally admit the island is being saved for the rich donor-developers, some of whom raced to build out the convention center before Long Island, a proven safe haven for the homeless and chronically ill, could be returned there. Also revealing that Easter and Passover triggers Baker to think of beaches and cookouts, not churches and synagogoues. That says all we need to know.
Aaaah, that fishy stench, right on schedule
Why would he be singled out for helping? All he's done is seize orders of equipment and supplies that Massachusetts needs. All he's done has been harmful.
Never mind Baker. YOU are fragile, and melodramatic, and dishonest.
People are dead because Trump
People are dead because Trump sucks at his job. He downplayed the virus for 2 entire months. America has more virus cases than any other country and that is Trumps fault. Are you aiming to be his fourth wife? Sure seems like it.
Passover is not a 'synagogue' holiday
It is observed primarily by gatherings in homes -- which for the most part had to be cancelled or virtualized.
Amen
n/t
Adam, honestly - why do you
Adam, honestly - why do you give a platform to their bizarre nonsense ramblings? I honestly would have thought you would have finally banned fishy after they were dog whistling on the post about the murdered BLS alum near the garden.
Oh, FFS
Also revealing that Easter and Passover triggers Baker to think of beaches and cookouts, not churches and synagogoues. That says all we need to know.
You could watch the video. Or you could read my post, which isn't nearly as long, in which the governor specifically talks about Easter (he also mentioned Passover, I didn't reference that because Passover will be like half over by Sunday, and it's not a holiday you go to synagogue for, so please stop talking about things you know nothing about). I mean, it's in the same paragraph as the reference you mention.
And enough already about the Long Island bridge - another topic you also don't know what you're talking about.
I know republicans are loathe
I know republicans are loathe to order things in government, but even otter republicans, much less democrats, have been more forceful in their stay at home and face mask requests. Could baker please grow some for once and order people to wear face masks in public, especially in stores. Those of us shui have to work retail and restaurant during this are being harmed mire for the lack of his strength to mandate mask wearing. Also, his weakness here makes it so workers are less likely, and in some stores not allowed to by management. If you are going to stores without a mask, you don't care about these workers. At least care selfishly about yourself to want others to, especially the workers exposed to so many people, and push Baker and Walsh to mandate their use. Their achingly slow rollout of guidelines is making people sick.