Those poor people not being able to handle a 75 minute drive. This is the biggest non story ever.

If you have a sick kid you want to be at MMC, Boston or Dartmouth

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Farmington is also right on the Maine border

This is gonna be one sick flu season.

The article said they tried Mass and Dartmouth and there weren't any beds after they realized they had to intubate a 3 month old. I don't even have kids but it seems cruel to call that a non story.

Exactly which is why MMC makes absolute sense from the beginning it’s one of the best hospitals in New England outside of Boston or Dartmouth.

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Has the hospital considered firing any staff who don't take the most recent round of covid boosters?

Good call on the hospital firing people who believe fox news over the entire medical community.

https://www.mainehealth.org/News/2022/11/MaineHealth-and-Northern-Light-Health-warn-of-strained-capacity

"On Friday, Nov. 4, all 87 staffed pediatric beds at The Barbara Bush Children’s Hospital at Maine Medical Center (BBCH) in Portland were occupied, and other pediatric patients were boarding in the MMC emergency department. The 37 staffed pediatric beds at Northern Light Eastern Maine Medical Center in Bangor were 97 percent full. "

https://wgme.com/amp/news/local/rsv-cases-hospital-bed-shortage-maine-children-northern-light-health-covid-19-cold-flu

I think the story here is that beds are becoming scarce for children.

Do you need a tissue?

Turns out the vaccine skeptics were actually right. The virus mutated so fast that the vaccines almost useless for the general population right now. But is that really shocking with how quickly they were developed?

Not disputing that they may have some limited positive effects in some groups as to fighting the virus, but doesn't seem to do jack shit for transmission at this point.

Now that the hospitals have a labor shortage I'm sure the hospitals are regretting succumbing to the church of covid braintrust.

No, they were not. The vaccine is still effective against preventing major health complications. You are misinformed to an extreme by fools and grifters.

I guess you missed the middle comment I made. Not saying it's 100% useless.

https://time.com/6230059/covid-19-variants-omicron-vaccine/

But, anyone still worrying about COVID is sad. Move on.

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They were already scarce. That’s absolutely nothing new.

Why were pediatric beds scarce?

I’ll let you read about that instead of answering.

Yep I am reading about it. Pediatric beds are more scarce now then they were during covid. Happy to provide you some links because you seem either misguided or coldly nonchalant.

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> coldly nonchalant

If the covid pandemic taught me anything is that there is much more casual psychopathy in the population than has ever been measured.

Yup covid has taught me no one gives a shit about the elderly and immunocompromised. Thought it would be different for CHILDREN though.

I did not, “limited positive effects” does not translate to “can prevent you from dying hooked up to a breathing tube.” The vaccine is an incredibly powerful tool to preserve human life. Because of that, I am not afraid or worried about COVID, but I will be again if people shirk the vaccine which causes hospitals to clog up and critical care is denied to those that have illnesses without an easy to take vaccine.

It's not even just beds, but "staffed beds". Many hospitals have the rooms/beds for pediatric patients but lack the staff to operate them. In my state, apparently requests for temp staffing have to be made over 8 weeks in advance. With an disease like RSV that can either be a nothing-burger or a serious epidemic within a shorter time-period than that, it's making it difficult for hospitals to staff in advance.

The vast majority of medical professionals that were fired or left over COVID vaccines were receptionists and file clerks and the like. Almost no one with medical education left the field because of vaccine requirements. There was a nursing shortage before the pandemic, and many more left due to burnout. Seeing people die from a preventable disease because they wouldn't get a vaccine will do that.

its not shocking because mRNA vaccines were being developed since the 80's

This seems like more of a facility issue than staffing. They simply don't have enough pediatric ICU space right now.

A respiratory infection that's filling up pediatric ICUs all over the country is indeed an important piece of news. It may not affect you, but there are other people out there besides yourself.

You are making huge leaps in logic between (a) virus mutation, (b) transmission among the populace, and (c) "quick" development of the vaccine.

(a) That SARS-CoV-2 mutates quickly makes it that much harder to develop vaccines against it. Unless we find other structures on the virus that are less prone to mutation and we can attack those, it will be an uphill battle no matter what. You only have to look at the flu and the flu vaccine to see how much work have left to do.

(b) It's not much of a stretch to say that vaccines helped to reduce general populace transmission. Vaccinated > immune system clamps down on COVID viral load earlier > less viral particles spread around. The problem is that SARS-CoV-2 can infect at a relatively low threshold, it looks like.

(c) mRNA vaccines have been in development for several decades now: https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-021-02483-w. We had the mRNA vaccine a few weeks after the pandemic swept the world. This is hindsight though, after clinical trials involving over 46,000 people all over the world indicated the safety and efficacy of the vaccines. You don't know this until you put in the work.

​

>Now that the hospitals have a labor shortage I'm sure the hospitals are regretting succumbing to the church of covid braintrust.

If you think labor shortages have nothing to do with the crush of COVID patients they've had to deal with during this pandemic and now the surge of RSV, you are naive.

> Almost no one with medical education left the field because of vaccine requirements.

Do you have some basis for that claim, or are you simply arbitrarily asserting something that would be true if your worldview is correct?

The effect on transmission is zero, and the duration of transmissibility as it relates to peak viral load still had no impact on the case studies.

Check the lancet journal of medicine report from last October.

The data shows that for those at risk, it can help prevent more serious side effects. But that's it.

It has no measurable beneficial effect on either acquiring or transmitting the virus, in comparison to someone that is unvaccinated.

The data also shows now that the side effects re: heart problems, is due to the vaccine, not COVID-19. That doesn't mean it's evil or a plot or that the benefits might not outweigh the heart risk, for people who are at risk from severe problems due to COVID-19.

But as far as the people who said that it's a personal decision re: risk / reward, they were absolutely correct. Everyone who criticized them as "plague rats" were wrong.

> hospital firing people [...] the entire medical community

This is a somewhat circular argument.

And all of them failed until covid, which was only marginally successful.

I read articles about people leaving and of the ones that broke down the numbers, most people quitting were not nurses. Most articles omit the breakdown and try to find at least one nurse to play to people with your bias, but it's still usually <1% of total staff that choose to leave. Almost no one with medical education chose to leave because of COVID vaccine mandates. This is true if only because almost no one chose to leave healthcare over it.

Most hospitals expect all staff to be up to date on vaccinations and that now includes COVID. Vaccine requirements at hospitals are completely normal and good.

I guess you ignored the 3 day old article I posted saying the new variants evade the vaccines quite effectively.

The most important thing we can do is to get everyone in this country to stop being obese and unhealthy.

Are you referencing the editorial here? https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lanres/article/PIIS2213-2600(20)30514-2/fulltext DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/S2213-2600(20)30514-2

Maybe read the article dick bag ?

Didn’t have to. I know people that work with them. But thanks

Especially democrats who put criminals in nursing homes during the peak pandemic and ran small businesses out of buisness :(

While their comment is a bit overblown, they’re not wrong. Healthcare workers are using scientifically verified techniques to treat people. Either get with the program or find a new profession.

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Except that's not what the troll is saying. The troll is saying they're short on workers because they fired employees that wouldn't follow scientific procedures. If they had just not fired the anti-science folks. For not following science they would be okay with no bed shortage.

When the truth is one the reason we are so short workers is because a lot of people didn't follow science and made this whole thing much worse. And this troll in particular is always crying about everything.

It's not worth it, this is the stupid response to this. The libertarian and republican response is that it's better to just let people die who get sick, instead of solving the problem so people don't have to die from preventable issues.

Yeah, if only we hadn't fired those plague carriers, and instead put them in close contact with medically vulnerable people. Somehow that would give us more beds.

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Right up until they get sick themselves, then they clamor for help.

https://www.salon.com/2021/08/08/former-newsmax-host-dies-of-covid-after-deathbed-about-face-on-anti-vax-beliefs/

"Think of the children" has been a meme for a reason. It gets trotted out all the time but it's only lip service.

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I've had a cough for like 2 weeks, not covid. Like every other person at work has something or their kids have it too.

It’s actually a nationwide staffing issue. Hospital may have 50 beds but can only staff 25, this they are “full, despite having empty beds. Also WTF does a Covid vaccine have to do with RSV

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I also need to add that the story is very scary for the family, however I believe only 2 hospitals in NH have facilities that can handle a Pediatric case in a vent. Maine med is likely physically closer to Farmington NH then it is to those two hospitals

Oh it's nothing new then? God forbid the news highlights an ongoing issue.

You know people who work with "them"?

The parents? You are saying through three levels of hearsay this family was too lazy to drive to Boston and that article is wrong?

It’s not the drive you fucking idiot. It’s the fact that hospitals are filled up and unable to accept new patients.

Also RSV is very dangerous for infants. Driving 75min is a long way to get your child help.

No, too lazy to drive to Portland. They wanted to go to Frisbie for some reason and some one correctly suggested Portland which they considered too far. Most parents I know would drive to California if it meant their children were getting proper care.

And given the sources some of which were contacted by the media it’s true. You could do your own research, their phone number is published

Character assassination is easier than responding on the merits.

Trust me, I'm much more educated than you. Unfortunately I don't eat less soy though.

It’s been going on this entire time. I feel really bad that the younger generations are so ignorant about current events.

Let's also not exclude the fact that the mass exodus of adequate medical staff was also partially due in part to inadequate working conditions, long hours and piss-poor treatment for shit pay, as well as the possibility that many contracted the virus and died as a result of trying to deal with the overwhelming number of patients being admitted and treated for Covid.

Just anecdotal, but yeah the only person I know who worked in a hospital setting that was telling me the vaccine wasn't worth it, was someone who worked in the billing department of a hospital.

> long hours and piss-poor treatment for shit pay,

Ain't that the truth. I work with a woman, who went to work in healthcare and spent a ton of money for training, and of course, lots of time and lo, she was over and done with it because of the shit pay, crap supervisors and even more miserable hours.

When a service sector job offers better wages and scheduling, Houston, the Medical Industry's got a problem...

> Everyone who criticized them as "plague rats" were wrong.

Oh, I think there's a ton of unvaccinated people that got struck with Covid that are left permanently crippled with heart, lung, kidney and liver issues that might beg to differ, never mind the dead ones..

Pretty much every person I know that has been vaccinated and caught Covid, has had at worst a few days of minor cold-like symptoms.

The only relatives I have that have died from this? Unvaccinated.

Dude, vaccines are the mandated norm for MD's and nurses.

Protects them and keeps the doctors and nurses from being the vectors that spread sickness as they go from patient to patient, room to room.

Any MD or nurse that says otherwise is lying for political reasons.

> The most important thing we can do is to get everyone in this country to stop being obese and unhealthy.

Yeah, that's not going to happen. Too much plastic in the environment now, all those xenoestrogens fucking everyone's metabolic processes up.

LOL! Preach!!

Maybe if they do another round of firings it will help. I'm reliably informed that during a public health crisis it is good policy to lay off staff.

Dartmouth and Elliot are full. You soggy towel.

>You soggy towel

This is almost as good as the "wet wipe" insult I saw earlier lol.

Wait what?!?

> Dude, vaccines are the mandated norm for MD's and nurses.

Are all healthcare workers mandated to get the TB vaccine?

Why are you mentioning the frequency of your soy ingestion?

You don't know what the term "plague rats" means.

Like I said in my post, it can help people who are at risk

But the term "plague rats" means "plague spreaders". Vaccinated or not vaccinated, it makes no difference regarding the spread.

I was literally taking a shit while reading this comment. I had planned to take a shower after. I was going to just call them a fucking moron. But then I realized, how useless and disappointed I was when I saw that my towel was wet.

Why would they go to Elliot? I’m sure they want tk bring their kid home.

Hahaha no worries! Found the post!

It was in rare insults. Here's a link to it.

Elliot has a children’s hospital, a NICU, and PICU

How is wet wipe a comment insult in the UK?!? Recently I found out twatwaffle was a common insult, too!

Hi, mom of a three year old with a kidney disorder here. I have been to each major hospital system here in Southern nh as well as Lebanon and every branch of DH. Three weeks ago my youngest had to be hospitalized for 4 days with respiratory viruses. Patient care for pediatrics by and large has been best at the Elliot. Dh is great but has nursing shortages for paying so shitty.

what? how the fuck does that make sense?

more patients means more work load. with more work load wouldnt you need more staffing?

how do you call anything as backwards as what you’ve stated reliably informed??

They are being sarcastic. Insinuating that the shortage is purely firing antivaxxers.

And 7 unexplained deaths to children in 30 years.

I always heard that disease carrying nurses that don’t believe in medicine should be treating our most vulnerable. Surely spreading disease faster will open up some bed.

Are you suggesting that the covid vaccine prevents the spread of covid? That's medical misinformation, and it's extremely dangerous to our democracy. Reported to the reddit admins.

https://theconversation.com/no-vaccinated-people-are-not-just-as-infectious-as-unvaccinated-people-if-they-get-covid-171302

Boy oh boy, according to the down votes the truth certainly does hurt. That’s what fear does, you can stick their noses in the truth all day and they will still believe the lie.

>November 17, 2021 1.59pm

The science has changed, you denier.

Boohoo little piss baby

https://theconversation.com/as-the-world-changes-science-does-too-and-thats-a-good-thing-152688

No asshole we did what was required. Still sweat are asses off gowning on on/off...wtf. Are you all doing? Nothing but adding to this BS

So sick of people like you. Fuck the fuck off! Come Walk in my shoes for 12 fucking hours of crazy! Such an uninformed assholes.

So tired of it you all need to stop crying

Fuck off

Please educate

You need to fuck off wow! Grinch

Wut? You're fired idiot

Honestly I’m going to say this here because I’ll be shunned in public for having an opinion. You should take your booster and shove it. Stop fucking with people livelihoods over this. Enjoy life as a sheep and I can’t wait to see how all these shots unfold on you in the future. Enjoy your undiscovered issues

No, people have left healthcare because a lot of us are sick and tired of shitty ass management. And taking care of a bunch of self absorbed cunts who can’t wear a damn mask unless it’s to harass voters.

You need a hug?

Did I miss something? COVID boosters work now? Pfizer says the booster is 4x more effective in people over 55 and yet their testing hasn’t been peer reviewed nor has the data been released to the public…and the CDC is downright begging everyone to get it or you’ll suffer. Such bullshtuff. Yeah, call me crazy…keep believing what you want and I will too. Open your friggin’ eyes, people and make a conscious effort to learn (and ask questions) instead of spewing garbage, “Duh, doh…uh oh, I was told to get the booster so I’ma get the booster”.

This! I was once a follower, but only cuz work (govt contractor) required me to…no F’n more…I’ll be unhealthy on my own thank you very much! LOL.

Knowing what I know now, by learning (ready, questioning, thinking), I feel for every single one of you who had to endure the ridiculousness of the CDC and their twisted, skewed and falsified “facts” and misguided directions.

F the federal govt…can’t do a single thing without F’n it all up.

It’s not a vaccine anymore (quite less) as it doesn’t protect you from getting COVID. Yet these asshats will believe whatever it is they want to and shame you for thinking differently. One day, we’ll all look back and have a chuckle…at the expense of all these sheep.

Yeah, easier said than done…poor people can’t eat healthy, it’s too friggin expensive.

This! This! This!

Remember when Joe Biden said COVID was over and then went and got a booster?

Yeah, my sister in law was in a nursing program when Covid made it's way here. They fast tracked her education and basically said she would get her certification by working through the pandemic. A year and a half later, she was cleaning houses because it was more money and less stress.

lol

I have had pfizer x 4...people to left and right of me dropped, 3 of them 2x, and I spent a day in a room with an infected person who dropped 3 days later. I was fine.

I can only tell you from personal experience and friends who are RN’s in multiple states. Look up how much money traveling RN’s make, they make that much because so many places are that desperate for them

I can tell you from first hand experience working in hospitals that this is true. Younger and older (mostly people without children at home) healthcare workers can make 3-5k a week as a traveling nurse or tech while people who are working for the hospital makes 700-1200 a week. Traveling employees also do a great job planning for vacations. They can just sign a contract saying…nah! Regular employees see management denies us left and right now.

It’s staffing. When a facility is full lately, it’s not typically because of how much equipment or beds we have. It’s because we don’t have staffing to take care of said number of people. There are wings and floors. In Dartmouth’s cause, buildings that are sitting empty.

It’s awful right now. We just had our third baby and our kindergartener had to stay home sick with us the day we brought him home from the hospital after he was born. He caught RSV at 1.5 weeks old from her and is just now recovering at 3 weeks.

Thankfully he didn’t need a hospital stay, but I did take him to the doctor 3 times during it to check his oxygen and lungs. I’m glad they found a bed for this sweet baby. I do not recommend having a baby in the fall. 👎🏼

Yes! We all do to offset all the abuse

OMG, I can't imagine what you all went through! I'm very glad to read your baby is recovering.

Could be RSV! It looks like a cold on kids and adults but the cough is rough. They won’t typically test for it unless it’s a small child. I only know this because we’re currently going through it and would have never known had we not tested the baby. Our school age kids had a cough for weeks and it hit my husband pretty hard, too.

Thank you! The worst part is that there are rapid RSV tests available but his, along with other kids our pediatrician tested last week, had false negatives. By the time his PCR came through with results he was well past the peak. Still gave us a big scare, especially since the news and media are saturated with warnings right now.

You’re just as likely to be a “plague carrier” as someone who is unvaccinated.

Yeah, my triple vaxxed spouse picked it up at work and got sick. Then four days later, I (unvaxxed) caught it (I didn’t go out in that time frame so I couldn’t have caught it from anyone else).

We were both sick the same amount of time with the same symptoms lol.

Paper after paper has found that a COVID infection carries a much higher risk of cardiovascular problems than the vaccine. You are straight up wrong there.

Vaccine effects on transmission haven't really been studied because of ethics. Don't mistake lack of any evidence for evidence against. There are a few studies out there that have found that it does reduce transmission. It would be really weird if vaccines reduced infection severity and duration without affecting transmission. All of those are linked to viral loads so reducing one will help the others.

IDK if you knew this, but Time isn't a scientific journal. This is a fear mongering piece intended for people like you to share as proof that vaccines don't work. The non-editorialized data are pretty clear that vaccines do work, just not as well against new variants.

TB is rare in the US so probably not. I worked in a hospital kitchen and we had a list of required vaccinations. It's just part of the job when you work anywhere in the medical field.

Yeah, and I go to work, am around too many people ALL DAY LONG, some vaxed, some not…I fly on a plane here there and everywhere and guess what? Not sick. Sugar water. Oh, and the economy is fine too. LMAO so much my 6 pack abs thank you.

It's referring to actual studies.

I'm talking about the vaccines performance now. Not a year ago or whenever in the past.

People are so dogmatic about vaccines as soon as they see the word their reptilian brain just goes haywire. It's okay to admit its a complex issue and the vaccines are not that great in November 2022 since the predominant strains in circulation have heavily mutated.

It's a tough job being a piss baby.

Yep. Supposedly there is a benefit (to the vaccine) in terms of how hard it hits you, I'm seen conflicting studies on that so at this point I'm just giving it the benefit of the doubt as far as that goes.

But in terms of whether or not you acquire the virus, OR transmit it: vaccine has zero or negligible impact.

Patently untrue. The study I'm referring to showed of > 1000 households where 1 person had COVID (half vaxxed, half not) what was the effect on other family members that shared the household, and visitors, where there was also a good mix of vaxxed and not vaxxed.

Some acquired the virus, some didn't. But even those results were evenly distributed among vaxxed and non vaxxed.

What's untrue exactly? Here's a review of more than one study that found reduced infection and transmission potential. The results aren't as clear cut as those for preventing severe infection because it's much more difficult to study transmission (ethically and logistically) in a robust method.

Also, when I said it would be really weird for a vaccine to reduce disease severity and not transmission potential, I mean that there's no known mechanism by which that can happen. A vaccine can't reduce only the virus particles that stay in the body and skip the ones destined to be expelled. The immune system doesn't work that way.

It includes a lot of links to make it look like they refer to actual research, but very little reference to actual research. Of the 10 links in the article, 5 are to other articles written by Time, 2 are to data about the prevalence of omicron variants, 1 is the GSAID homepage, and 1 is a treatment guideline update for monoclonal antibody treatment. Also at least 3 of the linked organizations (CDC, NIH, and GSAID) recommend vaccines and boosters for anyone eligible.

So 1 of 10 references is an actual (preprint) article about reduced vaccine efficacy. It also shows (figure 1b, c, d) that vaccination boosters provide a substantial increase in titers of neutralizing antibodies to all variants examined.

The point of this article is for people to read it while "researching" vaccine information and share it to bolster an argument. It contains almost no relevant information and what it has it heavily editorialized. I guess I can't fault them too much because it worked on you 100%.

The language you're using - "patently untrue" - is really strong for conclusions drawn from scientific study. Any good scientist couches their terms carefully for the very reason that because it's so damn ridiculously hard to prove causal relationships.

You dont sound smart enough to fly unassisted.

Geez, is that all you got to say in response to my truth? Asshat with Cheetos glazed fingers, go back to bed (where you belong). Wash your hands first.

My wife and daughter are nurses at Lawrence General. There are 0 pediatric beds in New England right now. Last week my daughter had to find a bed at a hospital in Albany for an RSV baby.

Stick with velcro

Parents concerned about the spread of RSV, flu, and COVID are encouraged to take our survey about the ongoing pandemic, which is now overlapping with the spread of other respiratory diseases after virtually all mitigations have been dropped across the US. The crisis inside pediatric hospitals is not unique to New England, but is happening across the country.

The survey is being conducted by the Educators Rank-and-File Safety Committee, a group of educators, parents and school workers who have organized against the bipartisan policy of "let it rip" in response to COVID-19.

https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1n1ZuXdkzrI_GXdNTfQ9sr1F5ZWDklwwQSmhxVqcTuas/edit?ts=634b83ee