A good friend has two close family members who are positive here in Alabama and both are fighting it while on a vent in the ICU. I really wish folks could understand why the spread of this has to be slowed down. I also don’t understand how real estate agents, farmers, mechanics, and everyone else who knows nothing about medicine, hospital patient flow or the science behind medicine can tell people in the community around them that this virus is no worse than the flu. I’m no longer debating it on here or any where. We have never seen flu patients triaged in most major city hospitals in make shift MASH units outside the hospital buildings due to lack of hospital space. Hospitals operate like a pond. The pond is the ICU units in this case, the outlet pipe is your step down/med surge units. What happens when your outlet pipe clogs up and your pond is receiving heavy rain water for days? What happens is that you lose water in an emergency overflow you drenched on one side of your dam. In this case, patients are clogging up the ICU’s and at the same time less sicker patients are clogging up the step down beds. What happens to your everyday heart attack, stroke patients, DKA’s, and trauma patients? The hospitals only emergency overflow involves either discharge the less sick or wait for patients to die to open up beds. The problem is that all these folks are terribly sick at once over a few short weeks. It’s like getting your yearly rainfall in just a few weeks. Because of this it doesn’t matter if 500,000 need and ICU bed or 75,000 need an ICU bed. Too many at one time is too many. And it will happen this week in Alabama if it doesn’t slow down. Google Louisiana hospitals and the covid virus.