News

I've been on Lemmy talking about this for ages. Listen. I'm in healthcare. I work under the Deparment of Developmental and Intellectual Disabilities in a 501c3 doing residential care.

The health care system in America is absolutely fucked from top down.

I'm working constantly. We do not have enough people. In my particular field, we are vastly underpaid for the work we do, so no one wants to do it. The jobs are there, the labor isn't. And listen, no one in this job can blame them!

We're so burned out that every time yet another person quits we all nod and say, "Good for them" and soldier on, because if we stop showing up, these people will die.

That's just residential care. People living communally with disabilities wind up in every facet of health care (urgent care, hospitals, physicians) at an insane rate, so I see different facilities almost every day, and everywhere I go the story is the same!

Something has to give. You can't order us to work and eventually the rising cost of living will force people like me to give up on these marginalized populations. Every LPN and CNA I know has quit healthcare altogether because it's not worth it. The only one I know who still works is a PRN contractor who charges over $30/hour to work in nursing homes. We have to do something or there won't be anyone left to treat anyone!

The only thing that can save us from this is to give billions to big corporations again...and allow them to increase cost of goods by another 70%......

3 human pandemics and at least 2 human-adjacent pandemics happening in dogs and chickens at the same time.

But not all experts agree. It’s “premature to say it’s going to be a bad year here,” Dr. Michael Osterholm—director of the University of Minnesota’s Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy (CIDRAP)—recently told Fortune. While pathogens like flu and RSV peaked earlier than usual during last year’s so called “tripledemic,” the severity of the season “wasn’t beyond usual.” What’s more, low hospital bed capacity and staff levels were under-appreciated factors that contributed to the crisis, making it look worse than it was, he said.

Encouragingly, while U.S. rates of hospitalization from COVID, RSV, and flu combined are on the rise, they remain below levels seen this time of year during the past two years. Still, they’re significantly higher than those seen in the two winters prior to the COVID-19 pandemic.

RSV hospitalizations are the highest they’ve been since 2020, with the exception of last winter. And flu hospitalizations are the highest they’ve been at this time of year since 2017, when they were identical—also with the exception of last year.>>