Thread by @DrEricDing

THAT DAY HAS ARRIVED—

Los Angeles County hospitals are preparing for potential *healthcare rationing* as ICUs overloaded with #COVID19. New proposed guidelines call for a shift towards maximizing saveable lives, and prioritizing care with best chance. 🧵
latimes.com/california/sto…

2) “Instead of trying everything to save a patient, their goal during a crisis is to save as many patients as possible, meaning those less likely to survive will not receive the same level of care they would have otherwise...”

3) “Doctors will no longer be pulling out all the stops to save a life but instead strategizing about how to keep as many people as possible from perishing.

4) “Some compromise of standard of care is unavoidable; it is not that an entity, system, or locale chooses to limit resources, it is that the resources are clearly not available to provide care in a regular manner,” the document reads.

5) “we don’t have enough trained staff for the number of patients who need care. We have brought in new staff, retrained and redeployed staff from other areas of the system, and have requested additional resources from the state,” Ghaly wrote.

6) “But these measures are not anticipated to be enough to meet the continuously escalating number of patients that are presenting across the county for care.”

Hence the need for the new LA county care rationing. #COVID19

7) In the latest HHS report— SoCal is in one of the worst areas of concern, and dubbed a “RAPID RISER” county.

https://twitter.com/DrEricDing/status/1340019868545019906

8) SoCal is a major hotspot. But so is 3/4 of the country. Anticipate HC rationing to continue.

9) SoCal has also has one of the highest per capita cases in the US. California is doing horrible now. But so are so many other states too. Tennessee and Indiana and... it’s endless.

10) Why do I write these long threads🧵 on the coronavirus?

Besides being an epidemiologist, it’s because I have been wracked with guilt since January. Background on what happened.... nymag.com/intelligencer/…

11) and we have now officially arrived at rationing...

https://twitter.com/drericding/status/1343331127789035524