Thread by @YouAreLobbyLud

1/ RURAL MEDICAL STAFFING IN NSW IN THE TIME OF COVID: A WARNING
I know about this. I have been a rural doctor in NSW. I know how hard it is to staff these places at the best of times.

2/ I am now getting imploring texts and emails from locum agencies offering me $3000 per day, equivalent to a salary of over $800k per year, to staff rural clinics and hospitals in outback NSW. That's over 50% more than the usual rate AND THERE ISN'T EVEN ANY COVID THERE YET.

3/ So why is this? Two reasons:
1. The medical workforce in Australia is extremely mobile, so the border restrictions have shut off a significant number of potential doctors from NSW.
2. The fear of having to work in such a place with a covid outbreak.

4/ Firstly, it makes it so much harder to transfer patients out when the big city is paralysed with covid and the last thing any of us want is to be stuck with a deteriorating patient in a remote place and no idea of when the airborne cavalry will come to the rescue.

5/ Secondly, if covid actually gets into any of these towns, especially those with significant Aboriginal populations, who on Earth wants to be left carrying the can?

6/ None of us wants to be the sole doctor running an old style plague hospital and deciding who will live and who will die. Frankly, $30,000 a day wouldn't be enough to get me there under those conditions.

7/ Do you ever get the feeling this whole "living with covid", "we'll vaccinate our way out" thing hasn't really been thought through? I do.