Category: Health Care
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What Can Northam Do, and Not Do, about COVID-19?
by James A. Bacon Two days ago, Peter Galuszka posted an interview he conducted with state epidemiologist Lilian Peake, a key functionary in Virginia’s response to the COVID-19 crisis. I found her responses appalling. The degree of passivity cannot be overstated. Her responses to most of Peter’s questions amounted to: “We’re tracking and monitoring the…
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NoVa Physicians List COVID-19 Priorities
by James C. Sherlock I re-publish here a communication from the Medical Society of Northern Virginia Board of Directors on matters of importance to its member physicians. Their concerns are the public’s concerns. Dear members, First, on behalf of the board of directors, I would like to thank our first line responders; primary care physicians,…
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COVID-19, COPN, and Strawmen
by James C. Sherlock Every time the discussion in this space turns to COPN and its relationship to lack of capacity to deal with COVID-19, some commenters accuse the authors of these columns of favoring nonsensical solutions such as forcing hospitals to build excess capacity. Those same commenters then reject those concepts as unworkable. That…
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Quantifying the Hospital-Bed Shortage
by James A. Bacon Two weeks ago, I raised the alarm: Virginia doesn’t have enough hospital beds to cope with the COVID-19 virus; capacity was most constrained in Northern Virginia. Yesterday, Bacon’s Rebellion contributor Jim Sherlock explained why: Certificate of Public Need (COPN) regulation throttled the addition of hospital beds in the Northern Virginia area.…
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An Interview With the State Epidemiologist
Here is interview I did today for Style Weekly with Dr. Lillian Peake, the State Epidemiologist for Virginia. It was for Style Weekly, but I think they won’t mind if I share it with you. — Peter Galuszka
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COVID-19 Update: Buckle Your Seatbelts!
The number of confirmed COVID-19 cases is surging, according to the latest data from the Virginia Department of Health. Confirmed cases reached 604 yesterday, a one-day increase of 164, the biggest yet. Meanwhile, the number of COVID-19 victims hospitalized increased to 83, also the biggest one-day increase yet seen in Virginia. It is difficult to…
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COVID-19: More Everyday Heroes…
Beech Tree Elementary to the rescue! When Beech Tree mother Van Nguyen heard about the shortage of medical face masks, she put her sewing skills into action and produced 20 masks. Local medical professional pleaded for more. Then Beech Tree 5th grader Caroline joined the effort. Learning how to sew from her mother and YouTube…
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Yes, You Should Wear Masks — to Protect Others, If Not Yourself
๏ปฟ — by a contributing writer This week Governor Ralph Northam restated what we have all been hearing for weeks: โHospitals and medical facilities in Virginia and around the country are in desperate need of additional masks, gowns, gloves, and other personal protective equipment.โ HCA Virginia reiterated the need Monday when announcing that it had…
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COPN’s Deadly Quid Pro Quo
by James C. Sherlock The Northern Virginia Community Hospital in Arlington was bought by HCA in 2002.ย The Arlington facility was closed in 2006 to comply with a 2005 Certificate of Public Need (COPN) decision that required HCA provide โtrade-inโ beds in the same health region to gain state permission to build a hospital in…
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COVID-19 Update: The Epidemic Intensifies
The Virginia Department of Health has published yesterday’s COVID-19 numbers, and they continue to show a rapidly spreading epidemic. Total confirmed cases (the tip of the iceberg) have risen to 460, an increase of 69 from the previous day. The number of hospitalizations has risen to 65, an increase of six from the day before.…
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NoVa Healthcare Adapts to the Epidemic
by James A. Bacon The Washington region, including Northern Virginia, is a looming epicenter of the COVID-19 epidemic. Known coronavirus cases in the metropolitan area now exceed 1,000, according to the Washington Post. And it will surprise no one to know that the number of cases confirmed by medical tests represents the proverbial tip of…
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Wartime Governor
by Chris Braunlich If Donald Trump is a โwartime presidentโ, Ralph Northam is now a โwartime governor.โ Unless one has been isolated on a Pacific isle (or wears tinfoil hats to block evil radio waves), Virginians understand that the pandemic we are in is deadly serious, growing exponentially, and requires radical steps to reduce its…
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Who’s Got ICU Beds?
As Virginians try to formulate rational COVID-19 policy, it would be helpful to know how many ICU beds there are in Virginia hospitals. We’ve got a handle on the count of acute-care beds, but the number of ICU beds, reserved for the most critically ill patients, is perhaps an even more critical. Virginia public health…
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How to Optimize the Lives/Jobs Tradeoff in the COVID-19 Epidemic
by James. B. Murray, Jr. The debate now raging over the tradeoffs between saving lives and economic disruption is clouded by oversimplification. The solutions we ultimately adopt will not be some groundless elimination of protective measures on Easter Sunday, any more than they will call for quarantining everyone, everywhere until some arbitrary date in July…
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COVID-19 Update: Ignore What I Said Yesterday, the Virus Is Going Exponential
John Butcher was right, and I was wrong. I was hoping, based on the previous two days’ worth of data and a heap of wishful thinking, that Virginia was heading up a less steep slope in the growth in the number of COVID-19 infections than widely feared. John maintained, however, that the data was consistent…