Best of the Web:


Bizarro Earth

Best of the Web: Staff shortages in US & UK hospitals mean THOUSANDS of beds occupied by elderly patients fit to be discharged

NHS logo building
'Staggering' number of frail and vulnerable people stuck on wards as hospitals 'grind to a halt' because of growing social care crisis

Around 10,000 hospital beds are currently occupied by elderly people owing to a lack of available care workers to look after them at home, NHS leaders have warned.

Senior figures said hospitals were "grinding to a halt" because of a growing crisis in social care, which has left "staggering" numbers of frail and vulnerable people stuck on wards for weeks on end.

Experts said shortages of care home staff - with an estimated loss of around 70,000 such workers in six months - had left hospitals overcrowded, even before winter starts and amid fears the growth of the omicron variant could make things worse.


Comment: Knowing the harm the vaccine mandates are having on patients due to dangerously low care home staffing levels, why doesn't the government and the healthcare bosses reverse the ruling? A report from the House of Lords recently revealed that there was no benefit in mandating vaccines on NHS healthcare staff, so why should it apply to care home staff?

It's likely because the government and NHS bosses are willing to sacrifice elderly patients and victimize their carers, but they know if were they to do the same to NHS the publicity generated by respected staff, and the outcry from the public, might put a halt (however temporary) to their ideological agenda.


Comment: The situation is just as dire over in the US, with some states enforcing vaccine mandates, despite there being no federal law requiring that they do, and, in turn, hospitals are struggling to provide care, with at least one A&E having to shut.

Bucks County Courier Times in the US reports that almost exactly the same issues are occurring in the US:
How staff shortages at Bucks, Montco nursing homes, rehabs are delaying hospital discharges, causing longer ER waits

Emergency departments at hospitals in Bucks and Montgomery counties have become especially busy in recent weeks as COVID cases are surging while health care staffing shortages have slowed the hospitals in discharging patients to nursing facilities and rehabilitation centers.

At Lower Bucks Hospital in Bristol Township, delays in discharging patients has affected bed availability throughout the hospital, spokeswoman Michelle Aliprentis said.

"We don't have the ability to discharge them because the nursing homes are unable to accept them. Unfortunately, we are left paralyzed with nowhere to place our patients," she said.

When there are delays in discharges, newer admitted patients must wait in the emergency department for a hospital bed to become available. This has created crowding and delays in treatment for less-acute conditions, officials said.


Numerous 'less-acute conditons' can become deadly if not given the necessary treatment. And we're seeing just that: 10,000+ EXCESS deaths in just 4 months in England, NOT Covid related, lockdown backlog partly to blame


"This results in a little more wait time for people to get their hospital bed and more of the emergency department beds can be filled with people waiting, and that in turn causes a long wait time (in the ED)," said Dr. Gerard Cleary, Jefferson Health-Abington chief medical officer.

The situation with staffing in long-term nursing facilities has become so critical that the Pennsylvania Health Care Association says that the Pennsylvania National Guard members may need to be given basic training in health care in case they are deployed to nursing facilities as some were to a center in Berks County recently.


Deploying nursing staff to do basic care work means hospitals are lacking critically trained staff.


"We have been in communication with the Department of Health, even asking for the National Guard to be prepared to help in facilities," said association President and CEO Zach Shamberg. "What we are seeing now is a domino effect.

"Skilled nursing facilities are unable to accept new residents because they do not have the staff to meet the demand beyond those they are already caring for. We have heard nursing homes have closed wings in their facilities because they don't have enough staff to care for those beds."


Doylestown Hospital spokeswoman Beth Long said, "Yes, there are challenges and delays with discharges due to the lack of open beds at the nursing facilities. This affects the ED because we used to be able to discharge some patients from the ED directly to a skilled nursing facility."

Lower Bucks Hospital has 150 beds split between medical and behavioral health, but staffs according to its census which is 50 patients currently.

"As long as the staffing shortages continue, we will have to take steps to address the increasing volume of patients. It's not often we have to take extreme measures like diverting ambulances, but this strain is a direct result of what's happening throughout the region. We are working on operational adjustments to support continuity of care to the best of our ability," Aliprentis said.


Dr. Larry Brilliant, St. Mary president and CEO, said the hospital with its 377 inpatient beds, is "near capacity."

The hospital is using the new emergency department program, nicknamed PIT for Provider in Triage, to ensure that all patients are treated as quickly as possible and to make the best use of staff and diagnostic equipment.

"We have our surge plans, but they're not being utilized yet; they're ready if we need them," he said.

St. Mary's emergency department has 62 beds for adult patients and 12 for pediatric patients. "If you need a bed, you're going to get a bed," Brilliant said. "We want people to get the care they needed as soon as possible."

Moving patients through emergency rooms quicker

According to a report issued by Medicare, before the PIT program was implemented, the wait time in St. Mary's emergency department averaged 210 minutes, the highest for hospitals in Bucks and Eastern Montgomery County, and higher than the national and Pennsylvania average of 175 minutes for hospitals like St. Mary that have very high volumes of patients, 60,000 or more a year.

The only other similar hospital in the area was Jefferson-Abington, where the wait time averages 197 minutes.

Dr. Darin Geracimos, chairman of the St. Mary Emergency Department, said that with the new PIT program a patient coming in with a heart attack will be seen "in about 5 seconds," as they always have been but someone with a sprained ankle may still have a wait for treatment but during that time, diagnosis of the injury will get underway even when the ED is very busy. That patient will be able to be treated and go home sooner than before.


Despite their attempts to reconfigure how they work, with less staff, adequate care is sacrificed, and patients will inevitably suffer.


The PIT program is used from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. Monday through Friday.

Doylestown Hospital has a similar program called MACU (Minor Acute Care Unit) to try to get people treated and out of the ED quicker. Jefferson Abington Hospital also is using its fast-track system in the Emergency Department to get people who can be treated and go home the care they need.

St. Mary now treats everyone coming to the ED as if they have COVID and tries to use social distancing and masks to separate people coming for treatment. The hospital's pediatric emergency department also has seen an increase in patients in part because of an increase in respiratory illnesses in children this year.


Lockdowns weakened and compromised people's immune systems leaving them more vulnerable when the ususal circulaiton of viruses resumes: Lockdowns blocked flu spread, what happens when it returns?


Children who need to be hospitalized are sent to a hospital that treats children as inpatients, of the parents' choosing.

At Doylestown Hospital, Long said, "Our pediatric inpatient census has been steady, but we've been able to provide beds for all who need them. The hospital has 271 inpatient beds, including six for children.

Jefferson-Abington has 665 beds and had 77,000 visits to its ED last year while Jefferson-Lansdale has 140 beds and received 23,000 ED visits.

Fighting COVID and other ways to stay out of the ER

Cleary, of Jefferson Health, advised everyone to get vaccinated against COVID for their own safety and that of others. And he said the emergency department is not the place to come for a COVID test except if the person is having serious symptoms.

He stressed that anyone feeling ill should call their family doctor rather than let their illness wait until they need emergency care.

While hospitals are not telling people to put off care they need, Cleary said some people are growing concerned about having elective surgery until they know their rehabilitation placement, should they need it, is guaranteed.

He said the issues right now with health care staffing shortages are caused because many older medical workers have retired or plan to do so and younger people are more hesitant to begin a health care career while the pandemic is ongoing, particular those who would normally apply for a medical assistant or other low-level and lower paying position.


Over in the UK, the lack of doctors is actually partly a result of doctor's wanting to preserve their salaries: UK's "burnt out" GPs warn many will quit if gov't force face-to-face appointments - same doctors who voted against training more doctors in 2008


The national shortage of daycare workers to tend to young children and older adults also is preventing some people from applying for health care jobs.

"We're challenged," Cleary said.
See also: This is completely avoidable" - New York hospitals prepare for staffing crisis as vaccination mandate forces mass firings

And check out SOTT radio's: NewsReal: NAZI Redux - Covid Camps in Australia, Mandatory Vaccinations in EU




NPC

Best of the Web: UK PM's TV address to the nation: 'Omicron tidal wave is here. I want everyone over 18 jabbed with booster by end of the month'


Comment: They're dispensing with all subtlety now; just flat out pseudo-science and fake news...


johnson TV address covid
"My loyal subjects, we will defeat the virus on the beaches..."
Boris Johnson has delivered his address to the nation from No 10 Downing Street tonight.

Mr Johnson, the Prime Minister, addressed the nation from Number Ten in a pre-recorded speech.

Mr Johnson's speech came at a difficult time for his premiership, which sees him battling with allegations he broke Covid laws by hosting a Christmas quiz last December.

He has to deal with a climbing Labour Parrty putting pressure on him in the polls.

Mr Johnson is also battling the fallout from a party at No.10 last December, which has seen his former spokesperson Allegra Stratton tearfully quit having been filmed joking about the incident.

Tonight, Mr Johnson chose to address the battle against the Omicron strain - and this is everything he announced.


Comment: The only 'walk-ins' here are the entities that now possess about a third of the population...


Heart - Black

Best of the Web: Stamford man, CNN staffer, allegedly coerced women to sexually 'train' daughters at his Vt. home

John Griffin sex trafficking minor CNN
© FacebookOn each count, Griffin faces a mandatory minimum sentence of 10 years in jail
A Connecticut resident and CNN employee is facing federal charges after enticing women and their underage daughters to engage in illegal sexual activity at his home in Vermont, federal prosecutors said Friday.

John Griffin, 44, of Stamford, was arrested Friday by the FBI after a federal grand jury in Vermont charged him with three counts of using a facility of interstate commerce to attempt to entice minors to engage in unlawful sexual activity.

Griffin appeared Friday afternoon in New Haven federal court via Zoom. Judge Robert Spector said he would file an order for Griffin to be transferred to Vermont.

According to his LinkedIn profile, Griffin has been a CNN employee since 2013.

Comment: Is CNN a cesspool of sexual misconduct? It sure looks like it.


Eye 2

Best of the Web: Julian Assange loses appeal: British High Court accepts US request to extradite him for trial

Timothy Holroyde Ian Burnett judges assange extradition
After a two-day hearing of the Julian Assange extradition case on 27/28 October 2021, the Lord Chief Justice Lord Burnett and Lord Justice Holroyde sided with the US on 10 December 2021, when the High Court reversed Vanessa Baraitser's decision not to extradite the WikiLeaks founder.
In a London courtroom on Friday morning, Julian Assange suffered a devastating blow to his quest for freedom. A two-judge appellate panel of the United Kingdom's High Court ruled that the U.S.'s request to extradite Assange to the U.S. to stand trial on espionage charges is legally valid.

As a result, that extradition request will now be sent to British Home Secretary Prita Patel, who technically must approve all extradition requests but, given the U.K. Government's long-time subservience to the U.S. security state, is all but certain to rubber-stamp it. Assange's representatives, including his fiancee Stella Morris, have vowed to appeal the ruling, but today's victory for the U.S. means that Assange's freedom, if it ever comes, is further away than ever: not months but years even under the best of circumstances.

In endorsing the U.S. extradition request, the High Court overturned a lower court's ruling from January which had concluded that the conditions of U.S. prison — particularly for those accused of national security crimes — are so harsh and oppressive that there is a high likelihood that Assange would commit suicide. In January's ruling, Judge Vanessa Baraitser rejected all of Assange's arguments that the U.S. was seeking to punish him not for crimes but for political offenses. But in rejecting the extradition request, she cited the numerous attestations from Assange's doctors that his physical and mental health had deteriorated greatly after seven years of confinement in the small Ecuadorian Embassy where he had obtained asylum, followed by his indefinite incarceration in the U.K.

Comment: RT interviews staunch Assange ally, Wikileaks editor-in-chief Kristinn Hrafnsson:
It's "shameful in every respect" that the UK wants to extradite Julian Assange to the US, the nation where top officials had purported plans to snatch or even assassinate him, the editor-in-chief of WikiLeaks told RT.

"We are dealing here with a nation where individuals on the top level ... at the CIA and the White House, contemplated kidnapping or killing Julian Assange," Kristinn Hrafnsson said, referring to a Yahoo News report detailing the CIA's hunt after Assange under then-Director Mike Pompeo.
"The High Court in London just came to a decision - on UN Human Rights Day - that it is OK to extradite an individual to a country which contemplated killing that individual. That is shameful in every respect."
Hrafnsson spoke to RT after a ruling of the UK's High Court overturned a January refusal to extradite Assange to the US issued by a magistrates' court. The new decision said the judge should have informed the US before making a ruling about her concerns that Assange could be subjected to abusive conditions in a US prison.


During the appeal hearings, lawyers representing the US government offered diplomatic assurances to the contrary - though supporters of Assange say the words of the Americans should not be trusted.

"Those assurances are not worth the paper they are written on," Hrafnsson said.

If the magistrates' court now reverses its earlier decision, Assange's defense team will file an appeal, the WikiLeaks representative said. It may take months more before it is decided whether the publisher will be sent to the US to stand trial on espionage charges, which carry a maximum sentence of 175 years.

Considering the years that Assange spent under surveillance and restriction of movement, including more than two years in the top-security Belmarsh Prison, his friends and family are worried for his health, and he should be released, Hrafnsson said.

"I will keep my hopes realistic, but this is the right thing to do. He should be out on bail. He should be with his family, with Stella [Moris] and their two boys, celebrating Christmas with them."



Tornado2

Best of the Web: Record-breaking tornado outbreak hits US: At least 3-dozen tornadoes form, including monster that dragged 4 states - At least 100 killed - UPDATES

Tornado outbreak leaving path of deadly destruction
Tornado outbreak leaving path of deadly destruction
Fox News' Ashley Strohmier provides the latest update after deadly tornadoes rip through Missouri, Arkansas, Tennessee, Kentucky and Illinois.


Comment: The picture isn't clear yet, but it looks like this could be the largest, most intense, 'super-outbreak' of tornadoes in US history. More information is coming in about the devastation along the storm track. Fox News reports:
Major incidents included heavy damage to an Amazon warehouse in Edwardsville, Illinois, where two people are confirmed dead and dozens of workers were reportedly trapped inside the building, and the destruction of a nursing home in Arkansas, where at least two people were killed and five were hurt, according to reports.
Illinois

The Amazon collapse - just across the Mississippi River from St. Louis - was being called a "mass casualty incident" by local emergency responders. At least 30 people were bused away from the scene to be reunited with family, officials said.

As many as 50 to 100 employees were believed to be inside the building, FOX 2 of St. Louis reported.

Police received word of the collapse around 8:30 p.m., police told FOX 2 early Saturday. Officials said the emergency response was expected to continue far into Saturday morning.


Missouri

In St. Charles County, Missouri, to the west of St. Louis, at least one person was killed and three injured when a tornado struck in the town of Defiance, according to FOX 2.

Arkansas

In Craighead County, Arkanas, emergency responders were dealing with a tragedy at the Monette Manor Nursing Home in Monette, FOX 16 of Little Rock reported.

At least 20 people were initially trapped inside the building after a suspected tornado struck, the report said. The damage left at least two people dead and five hurt, the report said.


The nursing home's roof was ripped off and other buildings in town also were damaged, according to FOX 16.

Survivors were being directed to a local church to reunite with loved ones, the station reported.

Another fatality was reported at a Dollar General store in Leachville, according to The Weather Channel.

Kentucky

Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear warned the commonwealth's residents Saturday that the tornado death toll there will exceed 70 after a candle factory in Mayfield with around 110 people inside was flattened.

He said a single tornado ripped across the state for more than 200 miles.

Earlier, the governor declared a state of emergency after major tornado damage was reported in the western part of the state.

Beshear called it the "most devastating tornado event in our state's history."

"It is indescribable," he continued. "The level of devastation is unlike anything I have ever seen."

"Loss of life is expected," in western Kentucky, the Kentucky State Police wrote on Twitter.

Southwest Kentucky saw "twin tornadoes" strike around 2:20 a.m. near Bowling Green, WDRB reported.

"People that weren't even official first responders been up all night trying to help their friends and neighbors and family," Rep. James Comer, R-Ky., told "Fox & Friends Weekend." "Just a devastating thing to go through the community and just something that you hope you never have to witness."

In Madisonville, Kentucky, a freight-train derailment was reported shortly after midnight, related to severe weather. No injuries were immediately reported, a spokeswoman for rail company CSX Corp. told Fox News.

Tennessee

At least two people were confirmed dead in Obion County, Tennessee, after dangerous storms tore through the area, FOX 17 of Nashville reported. No details were immediately available on how the deaths occurred.
Social media offered live updates from the affected areas as well as issuing warnings to those further up the storm track:







The fallout:


THE largest and deadliest tornado outbreak in the US occurred 10 years ago in April 2011. Yesterday's outbreak saw only about a tenth of that in terms of the number of tornadoes, but it may top it in terms of fatalities, and the intensity of particular tornadoes, like the one that appears to be the first ever to track through 4 states...


Magic Wand

Best of the Web: Biden has successfully solved the Ukraine crisis he manufactured

biden
© REUTERS / Kevin Lamarque
Joe Biden needed an agreement with Vladimir Putin that would help reduce tensions in Europe over Ukraine and NATO expansion. So he manufactured a crisis as an excuse for putting a US position on the table.

The news coming out of Ukraine was dire - Russia had mobilized between 95-125,000 troops along its border with Ukraine, and US intelligence agencies were predicting that an invasion was imminent. NATO was panicking, and Vladimir Putin was insisting that Ukraine must never be allowed to join the transatlantic alliance.

Biden, to clear the air with Putin, agreed to a video conference with the Russian President, where he "looked him in the eye" and warned of serious consequences, including unprecedented economic sanctions and the threat of deploying additional US forces to Europe, should Russia invade Ukraine.

Comment: See also:


Attention

Best of the Web: 298 athlete cardiac arrests, serious issues, 170 dead, after COVID shot

althletes collapse deaths covid vaccine
© GoodSciencing.comAthlete collapses and deaths chart to 10th December 2021.
It is definitely not normal for young athletes to suffer from cardiac arrests or to die while playing their sport, but this year it is happening. All of these heart issues and deaths come shortly after they got a COVID shot. While it is possible this can happen to people who did not get a COVID shot, the sheer numbers clearly point to the only obvious cause.

The so-called health professionals running the COVID shot programs around the world keep repeating that "the COVID shot is a normal vaccine and it is safe and effective."

So in response to their pronouncement, here is a non-exhaustive and continuously growing list of young athletes who had major medical issues in 2021 after receiving one or more COVID shots. Initially, many of these were not reported. We know that many people were told not to tell anyone about their adverse reactions and the media was not reporting them. They started happening after the first COVID vaccinations. The mainstream media still are not reporting most, but sports news cannot ignore the fact that soccer players and other stars collapse in the middle of a game due to a heart attack. Many of those die - about 50%.

Eye 2

Best of the Web: Operation Extermination: The Plan to Decimate the Human Immune System with a Lab-Generated Pathogen

Bill Gates
"If someone wished to kill a significant portion of the world's population over the next few years, the systems being put in place right now would enable it." Dr. Mike Yeadon, former Pfizer Vice President
"And this is the spirit of the antichrist, of which you have heard is coming; and now is already in the world." 1 John 4:2-3
Question- Does the Covid-19 vaccine damage the immune system?

Answer- It does. It impairs the body's ability to fight infection, viruses and disease.

Question- If that's true, then why haven't more people died after getting vaccinated?

Answer- I'm not sure what you mean? The vaccine has killed more people than any vaccine in history. "So far, in the United States, the death toll is three times higher than the total of all vaccines in the last 35 years." That's simply astonishing. We've also seen a steady rise in all-cause mortality and excess deaths in the countries that launched mass vaccination campaigns earlier in the year. Sometimes the increase is as much as 20 percent over the five-year average. That is a massive spike in fatalities, and it's largely attributable to the vaccine. So, what do you mean when you say, "Why haven't more people died"? Did you expect to see people clutching their hearts and dropping dead after getting jabbed? That's a very naive understanding of how the injection works. (See: "COVID Deaths Before and After Vaccination Programs", You Tube; 2 minutes)

Bullseye

Best of the Web: A brief history of epic mass madness

insane crowd mass psychosis
The thesis called mass formation psychosis put forward lately by the Belgian psychologist Mattias Desmet — a good digest here in text, not video — goes a long way to explaining the disgraceful mindfuckery that Western Civ has fallen for in our time, promulgated by a thinking class that descended into abject madness. It's well worth reviewing.

The descent was provoked by the existential anxiety over the collapse of techno-industrial economies and the end of progress as-we've-known-it. (Have you noticed: it was the self-styled "progressives" who went the craziest?) As Dr. Desmet lays it out, the disconnectedness of contemporary life, its lack of meaning or purpose for many, leads to unendurable anxiety. All that inchoate fear seeks desperately to attach itself to some real object, some thing or some force that can be comprehended, fought, and triumphantly overcome. Finding such a target produces an intoxicating sense of communal connection, purpose, and meaning, driving actions that are often crazy and also absolutely impervious to rational debate.

Bizarro Earth

Best of the Web: The Psychorium: A needed new analytical tool in the study of pathocracy

Ponerology
© Red Pill PressPolitical Ponerology
As mentioned in an earlier post, I observed that an important scholar introducing the concept of pathocracy, and who introduced me to the importance of systemic incursion of psychopaths into politics, was Andrew Łobaczewski. In his book, Political Ponerology, on several occasions, he provided extended discussion of a phenomenon, for which he provides no precise name. Here are some of his observations.

He refers to times of extreme comfort, wherein an aversion to discomfort leads people to resist having to hear uncomfortable truths:
In such times, the capacity for logical and disciplined thought, born of necessity during difficult times, begins to fade. When communities lose the capacity for psychological reason and moral criticism, the processes of the generation of evil are intensified at every social scale, whether individual or macrosocial, until they give rise to "bad" times.

When a few generations' worth of "good-time" insouciance and increasing hysterics results in a societal deficit regarding psychological skill and moral criticism, this paves the way for pathological plotters, spellbinders, even more primitive impostors, and their organized systems of social and moral destruction to act and merge into the processes of the origination of evil. They are essential factors in its synthesis.

Comment: See also: And check out SOTT radio's: