It pisses me off so much because if everyone in the country/world who didn’t believe this was as big of a deal as it is came to live at my address for a week, it would be an eye opening experience. No need for me to repeat what I’ve already said a thousand times in this thread but it’s just so frustrating. If people in general heard the number of sirens I heard, saw the refrigerated trucks lined up in the street, saw the sidewalk converted into extra hospital space, saw it go on for weeks without end, then maybe they’d understand how naive and ill considered all of these little “bargaining” questions are. What if I go to the movies but we sit apart? What if we eat brunch with masks half on? What if we go to the beach but don’t play with others? What if we just meet outside for coffee six feet away? If people saw the sheer misery of this thing up close, if they saw how it overwhelms the medical system, if they really truly understood that an outbreak means you might call “911” for help and be told that there was no help available to be provided, maybe they’d realize how unimportant all of that other stuff is. And I realize I may be coming off as an asshole, but when you’ve seen how bad this gets up close, it’s hard not to want to react incredulously (or worse) when someone else has a temper tantrum over not getting to see a movie or having to stay home.
But that's precisely it. IF people saw the same thing as you... which a whole lot of people do/have not... and it's not really their fault to not have that staring them in the face, except the doctors, nurses, et al you mentioned (which is its own strange reality)...
I also actually live near a NYC hospital (in Brooklyn... roughly 5min walk away), and I have not personally seen nor heard what you describe (in how very visibly overwhelmed it is). Of course, I don't doubt your description one bit, but it does seem a bit anecdotal instead of being prevalent and illustrative of the overall hospitalization situation even for NYC. And we can't really expect people to all think and behave as you believe absolutely necessary given the large disparity in experiences.
I suspect the worst of it (like your local hospital situation) is clustered around some specific locations (and demographics), not everywhere in NYC. Not sure what's driving that beyond the resident demographic that might be more vulnerable to and/or impacted by this pandemic...
And it's not like Brooklyn hasn't been hit similarly hard in terms of confirmed infection count, but maybe it's much worse in certain other (less gentrified?) parts of the borough...
IF I sound like I'm downplaying the situation and/or the risks, that's certainly not my intention, but can't expect everyone to feel quite the same way as you do if they all really cannot see for themselves what you see, especially because it really hasn't happened in most places... probably not in/around most hospitals outside NYC -- it's not even clear to me whether it's quite that prevalent amongst NYC hospitals given how it is (not) in my neck of the woods...
_Man_
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