> Some people have to, because there simply isn't any hospital in their area with space for them.
Citation needed on that one. There is a lot of media fearmongering out there that results in outliers and things that are normal practice getting taken out of context and blown up into something scary.
You can see it in statistics. When the hospitalization starts dropping while case counts are going up, it's because more cases are being managed at home.
Prioritizing critical care is normal when care is in short supply, but it means that you are more likely to have to deal with COVID at home when the local healthcare system is overstressed.
> on Nov. 1, the Covid Tracking Project’s seven-day average showed about 80,000 new cases — which we would predict should lead to about 2,800 new hospitalizations a week later, by Nov. 8. Instead, there were 2,600, a little fewer than expected. On Nov. 15, we had 146,000 new cases, which should have resulted in about 5,100 new hospitalizations by Nov. 22. However, there were fewer than 3,700. This pattern of declining rates of hospitalization continued through the end of November.
> What is happening is pretty simple: Because hospitals are filling up, they are admitting fewer and fewer people. Any doctor or nurse will tell you that as the demand for beds soars, the threshold for admission rises with it...
> The decision on whether to admit a patient depends on two things: clinical judgment and bed availability. Critically ill patients will always be admitted. But as hospitals start to fill up, those who are less sick — younger covid patients, or those whose oxygen levels aren’t yet dangerously low — get sent home. These patients would be safer in a hospital bed, but there isn’t one available for them anymore.
Citation needed on that one. There is a lot of media fearmongering out there that results in outliers and things that are normal practice getting taken out of context and blown up into something scary.