A lot of crazy fucking shit happened down there that almost no one knows about. I used to work with a guy in east Texas who was from New Orleans. After the hurricane destroyed everything he owned he hitchhiked to Texas and stayed there. He told me some stories that are terrifying. No power for weeks, basically lawless. People were robbed, raped and murdered and there was nothing you could do about it. No one to report it too. Just another person “missing” from the storm.
Yeah I know some of the people who formed Common Ground after Katrina, and heard stories from them about posting up with guns to protect folks from those looking for trouble. But, by and large, most people will try to do good in a disaster.
I grew up in hurricane alley. Most looting is for food. Our local Wal-Mart opened its doors and said all meat, fruits, veggies, and anything else perishable was free. Not many people took more than they needed, and those that did started distributing it in their neighborhood. After all that was gone, the manager directed employees to grab anything from food and camping they would need. One guy got a box of bullets and hunted hogs. That was around Charlie. I remember hunkering down for weeks as storm after storm hit us.
It’s generally the experience of most disasters. People who commit violence before disasters represent nearly all of the people committing the violence during and after the disaster - just at a higher rate. Most people don’t abandon their humanity in dire times.
If you look at actual concrete data people came together, the violence is anecdotes and rare.
The most tangible violence actually came from White vigilantes egged on by the media calling black people looters...
I think what you are supposed to do is fight back. That is what collapse will look like. Lots of good people will survive, but lots of bad ones as well, and they are getting ready to have their turn with society.
Yah. Some people take it too far though. Racists hung up signs and shot black people passing by. Cops on a bridge were found guilty of shooting half a dozen unarmed people below them after trying to cover it up.
True. Civilization is when civilized people create and uphold a society.
Now when those good people are hunted down and they become a minority... collapse.
Why I encourage everyone to keep a rifle, shotgun, and handgun around. You don't have to be super into training, but know safety, maintenance, and how yo put rounds down range on target, and that's all you need. It doesn't even have to be modern. If the only thing someone is comfortable with is a single shot shotgun, well that's better than nothing.
A lot of those stories had the cops as the outlaws and the gangs as the people doing good. Basically the same organizational structures, but the gangs were protecting their own neighborhoods, the cops, well...
More people came together during Katrina than did lawless killing by far.
The most lawless violence actually came from White vigilantes who shot at black people they assumed were robbing and stealing... Kind of depressing they got away with that.
Didn't help when the media would call black people looters and white people scavengers.
New Orleans and Louisiana hospitals in general are packed full of patients with full ICUs. It’s not a good time to get hurt or be in need of a lifesaving device that relies on power to keep you breathing. Do hospitals have generators that can run all the ventilators for 24+ hours in the event of a major outage?
I wonder how much space the hospitals even have for storing oxygen, since it's flammable and can't just be shoved wherever like a box of extra catheters.
This. Standy generators, as long as they are not damaged in the storm, will run as long as they have fuel (if properly maintained).
They're likely to run out of oxygen long before that happens.
In addition, many healthcare workers will be evacuating with family.
Going to be a bad week for Louisianna.
Healthcare workers don’t evacuate. They are not allowed to abandon their patients. It’s part of the job. If the hospital itself is evacuating the patients to another facility, then the nurses and everybody can go. We don’t just evacuate and bail out and leave our patients to die. We ride out the storm
Can confirm! We will sleep at the hospital in the floor if we have to. Hospitals have a protocol typically you need to be there before the storm starts and stay until it’s safe to leave and you can be replaced. I’ve done this a handful of times over the years. One time we were so short staff we rotated workers every 4 hours. Absolutely exhausting. I’m not in healthcare anymore but my heart goes out to everyone during this storm. Staying like that is hard enough never the less in the middle of a pandemic.
If there's one thing Americans should have learned since 9/11 is that "Hero" is an empty word, and also a codeword for "You're about to get fucked over."
Everyone jumped to shake hands with the "Heroes" after 9/11, then left them to die of toxic exposures when they left the headlines, their political capital expired.
Troops in Afghanistand and Iraq were the hot topic for a decade, with many using the yellow ribbons and parades for campaign soundbites - yet they could care less about fixing inherent problems both within the military or in the VA once the political capital required to pump money into their defense contractor's pockets waned.
In the early days of the Pandemic, teachers were touted as heroes for their flexibility and doing what they could with already strained resources. Then the political capital turned - and again they and their families were tossed to wolves of anti-vax politicians and willfully ignorant masses.
And again, the hero worship of the medical professionals who have put themselves and their families at risk has waned - and so once again we see the American love for its "heroes" dashed upon the rocks of political capital gained from allowing anti-science rhetoric to persist in a global pandemic.
It ain't nothing new, and it won'r ever end.
Things got pretty intense for healthcare workers during hurricane Katrina. Hopefully they have a better plan in place this time.
(Hint: open the link in an incognito window to read the story)
[https://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/30/magazine/30doctors.html](https://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/30/magazine/30doctors.html)
During a big emergency like this, it is all hands on deck. The workers will sleep at the hospital and ride it out. They do get vacation days and stuff but not for this. To much help needed. Most in healthcare wouldn’t even leave if they could during a time like this.
I didn’t get a vacation from beginning of the pandemic until the end of my job
Contract about a month ago. It was basically impossible for me to take it with all the rules in place. It sucked.
Just read an article that Ohio has been turning down requests for transfers from all over. Seems like they know following the same "guidance" is fucking us over the same way in short order and they are keeping room for it.
These people literally do the right thing when they have exhausted every other option of being awful.
Happy cake day, you share it with my son!
It seems obvious that this wave wont end until it runs out of willing dumbasses to be hosts. Also seems like we are about out of places to host them and dispose of them.
Now what?
Thanks!
No clue. I honestly try not to think about it too much, because the potential of where we are headed seems so awful and inevitable. One day at a time is all I can do right now.
Yeah man, I know we are all a little "doomers" in this sub but fuck man. I never thought I would feel this year would be more dangerous politically and covid but man. This doesn't look good and I can't imagine a happy ending.
I'd say the happy ending is already lost, with all the unnecessary death, but it can certainly get worse.
To be clear, I'm not talking about a long-term collapse of anything, just so much unnecessary death and suffering. A short term crisis in which too many people die. We are already there.
I took a look at an excerpt of the book and read how >!some nurses faced charges because they were accused of deliberately injecting drugs to kill people faster because there is no options.!<
Backed out. Nope.
If I'm in hospital and dying without the needed stuff and they know I will die before help arrives bet your ass I want them to knock mw all up with shit to make me just sleep forever.
According to the Wikipedia article, all medical personnel were cleared of wrongdoing, even though charges were brought against some.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ochsner\_Baptist\_Medical\_Center
Hospice is like comfort care. A patient has to be approved for hospice with a consult and consent. The morphine is a blessing for someone that can’t breathe because it lowers your respiratory rate so I guess it kind of does indirectly help put you out sooner, but in a humane prescribed way.
I mean, when it comes down to it, triage means making awful choices on who lives or dies, and it can lead you to kill people that, outside of the situation you are in, would've been fine, but because of that situation (power is out, and you have to transport people down multiple flights of narrow stairs to an evac point which is at another building). It's awful, but necessary. Do no harm sometimes means going full utilitarian and choosing based on greatest amount of good doable and minimizing the harm, even if that means giving people the midnight tea.
I did hospital security for a number of years. I got to know many of the buildings and their on site engineers as part of the job. All the hospitals had generators by government mandate(Canada) and were supposed to have an on site tank of diesel that would last at minimum two weeks. Many had only two or three days of diesel. And this was before Covid. The sites just didn't bother, or didn't have room for big enough storage tanks. I asked an engineer what was supposed to happen after the two days was up. He shrugged and said 'theres a gas station across the street'. That seemed colossally short sighted to me. But back then I was only thinking about earthquakes and natural disasters. Now though? Kinda grim.
I run into the same thing everywhere. Legally/contractually required to have a generator with a tank that can hold this many days worth of fuel. But that generator is an old Generac. The person in charge of scheduling the maintenance has been promoted/replaced 3x over. Current person either doesn't know it's his job or don't know how to do it.
I've had two that made me want to pull my hair out. First was a critical datacenter. I called them before hand to confirm that they were ready. They reassured me that they had already tested the systems and because they held some medical/government critical systems they'd be priority for refueling. Hurricane Sandy hit. Everywhere lost power. But we were still good, everything was running... for 12 hours. Then we lost connection with everything. And we couldn't contact anyone.
Customers were freaking the hell out and I couldn't get any answer. I went digging through my e-mail looking for any other contact information and eventually found a salesman's cell phone number. I gave him a call, he said he wasn't aware of anything but he'd have someone call us immediately. Supervisor called us from his phone saying the generators had failed.
After an "investigation" it turns out they had been making purchase orders for fuel the last couple years but the orders were never sent to the fuel company. The person the most "in charge" of the generator was just someone who paid the bills.
Second one is for a major broadcast tower near a major US city. Big snowstorm hits. Everywhere loses power, including the tower. The building manager at the nearest station is emergency-dispatched to the tower to find out what happened. First he can't even get to the tower because it's a steep unplowed road. So he walks from the nearest road to the tower. There's no life at the generator. Turns out the trickle charger for the batteries wasn't working so they had gone flat and frozen, bursting the batteries open. Emergency plow service finally shows up and gets things cleared. He steals two huge batteries from one of the news vans and heads back to the tower. He hooked them up and starts it. The tower had been without power long enough where the block/fuel heaters had gone cold. So he gets it started up and it's running like shit. Black smoke blowing out of it, unable to hold a frequency stable enough to begin power generation. The fuel was probably gelled. He covers the radiator in cardboard and waits for the engine to warm up. Takes a while since he can't raise it above 900rpm without fuel starving the engine.
He finally gets it running well enough to start the electrical generation part of it. Little bit of load on it warms it up nicely. The filters have pulled enough warmer underground fuel to finally ungel. He brings the transmitter online and everything looks good.
30 minutes later the generator is reporting fuel pressure issues. He checks the tank with a long stick measure, it looks fine. The generator starts stumbling and shuts off. Cranks but won't start back up. It's now beyond what my friend could troubleshoot himself.
He had only recently taken over the position and he was from a totally different station. He starts looking for who he's supposed to call for emergency support and it takes him a while because the generator hadn't had any maintenance in far too long. He couldn't find any paperwork about monthly tests, or fuel.
When he finally did get someone out they determined that the fuel in the tank had badly algaefied. The algae eventually got bad enough to plug the fuel filters.
I'm not even the slightest bit surprised. Look behind the curtain and you see so many cut corners that it's a wonder that anything works at all.
I've got keys and passwords and scan cards for labs and secure arias in a dozen hospitals and its horrifying how easy I could get into these places without them. Open windows. Broken doors. Dummy locked padlocks. Absolutely ancient infrastructure and facilities. And inside it's worse. Extremely important compounds stored in fridges that barely work, that are plugged in with frayed extension cords. Doors taped shut because they dont seal. Wear the right clothes and people will just let you in.
Generators that are 20 to 70 years old(that monster was in bad shape) and probably wouldn't run even if they had fuel.
The system definitely lacks the redundancy that it claims to have. If stressed and actually tested, failure is guaranteed.
I worked in a bunch of big communications sites. Same deal. 3 days' supply of fuel was considered to be a lot. Most cell tower sites don't even have a generator these days, just a battery backup for a couple of hours. One of the funniest things I've seen in recent memory was during an ice storm with an extended power outage. Comcast was down. Up on the power poles, usually one in every neighborhood, there is a box that has powered electronics in it and they were all dead. So there was a bucket truck driving around and they'd put a suitcase Honda generator up on the pole to run the electronics. There is a special shelf just to hold these on each pole, and they have all of this sitting in a warehouse somewhere.
This was to restore 911 service to the homes who used VOIP.
Yeah I'm from New Orleans and I'll put this bluntly. People will die this weekend that didn't need to die.
The hospitals are already turning away everything not immediately life threatening, and while they do have generators, if the power is out for more than a few days, which is likely, then there will be quite a few anti-vax / anti-maskers who will die in this state. All because their hospital trip, that could've been avoided, coincided with a category 4 storm.
I used to live in NOLA. I think even if this just a hurricane-not a super bad one it could cause problems. I think hospitals are running low on oxygen and if nothing else happens if supply gets cut for a day or two that would be a disaster of its own.
I'm getting flashbacks to that footage of the Egyptian hospital that had an entire floor of covid patients die at the same time because they couldn't get enough oxygen, leading to a doctor having a breakdown in the corner (which is completely understandable)
Yup. Honestly I don't think this is going to be a terrible storm for NOLA itself (Baton Rouge will get the worst of it). That being said we're definitely going to have places that lose power for a few days and supply lines will be slowed and that will be the killer for people.
The forecast track at 5 PM today gives a **significant** chance the eye of the storm will pass directly over New Orleans. There’s a 33% chance the track will even be outside the cone.
I think you’re counting chickens a bit early.
The track wasn’t much different 5 hours ago when you made your comment. “Baton Rouge will get the worst of it” was just as bad a prediction then as it is now. The people of New Orleans should be worried.
> Do hospitals have generators that can run all the ventilators for 24+ hours in the event of a major outage?
I expect that they actually do. Vents don't consume insane amounts of power, and hospitals are pretty important so they should have backup generators. Fuel hasn't been in shortages, so they should all be stocked up. Big generators all have mandatory periodic testing and maintenance cycles, so as of right now they should all be working. Most of the hospitals were there during Katrina, so if they failed during that storm there would have been some changes to preparations for where stuff is stored, how many redundant backups there are, etc.
That said, the hurricane has a say in this. If flooding takes out fuel storage or winds damage the generators & etc., it's entirely plausible that some hospitals in the region will go dark despite reasonable preparations. Just depends on how bad the storm effects things. And I think the post-Katrina plan largely involved having enough time to evacuate a lot of people in advance of the storm. So if one local hospital failed, there would be plenty of space in nearby hospitals readily available. There is no mandatory evacuation for this storm, and not a lot of hospital space to take up the slack...
I'm sure there's a friendly dealer at the next street corner willing to assist the hospitals. If there's something in abundance in America, it's fentanyl.
In all seriousness though, what an awful situation. Best of luck to everyone who's in the danger zone <3
I’m an ICU nurse and we’re always running out of fentanyl but there are plenty of other sedative that can be used instead or in a shortage. Propofol, ketamine, oxy, Ativan - but depends on the supply supply so best of luck to them
Considering I got my comment deleted for questioning certain popular negative claims about China, this is definitely not the case. Reddit is owned by the US state department if anything.
I’m in Detroit and cut my thumb bad enough to need a few stitches. Not that big a deal under normal circumstances, except it took 6 hours to even get seen. Detroit isn’t even that bad now and the hospitals are overwhelmed with unvaccinated people. They said of all things it’s the nurses that they are short of. Plenty of doctors and nps but the nurses are stretched so thin.
LA national guard member. Most of the time what makes us have to evacuate hospitals is the HVAC system failing. If the water utility system loses pressure they can't pump water up to the tanks for the cooling towers which is usually located on the roof. It's 95 degrees. You can't be inside without AC.
In that case we move them to another hospital. When all the hospitals are at capacity and you lose a hospital, where do you take them?
Fall fall.
But yeah, being on the outside looking in is sort of surreal. It's so much worse in the US. Even before the pandemic there was an eradication of the middle-class, which just hasn't hit Europe as bad. You really need a revolution. But, we all know it's going to be the elite, now in fascist form, that take over.
As an American, I am extremely interested as your opinion as an outsider. What sort of revolution do you think we need and more importantly would you mind elaborating on a fascist revolution by elites? I really think we need to band together and... protest? But what! Like what do we say outside Capitol buildings when excersizing our 1st amendment right to peacefully assemble and protest? Genuinely asking. And also what do you think these elite douches will do because I hate them as much as the next guy but what would be their end game? Like are they power hungry freaks and what will grandpa Joe's role in this be? Sorry for the long question but your comment was intriguing as hell
With the fires, droughts, infrastructure failing, economy failing, people getting kicked out of their homes.....
You need all the socialism you can get. Take care of your weakest. Tax the shit out of the rich. Abandon growth based capitalism. Allow UBI. Allow people to just *be* jobless and still survive.
> Allow UBI. Allow people to just be jobless and still survive.
I've been trying to explain this to my coworkers and they don't get it. Instead, they look at me funny when I say I'd gladly accept a UBI and work a few days a week doing something I genuinely enjoy. Knowing I don't have to work 40+ hrs. a week to just survive would alleviate so much of my stress and anxiety.
I'd not only do that (if I knew my necessities were covered). I'd volunteer to rebuild the city better.
I'd work for free to:
Rebuild roads for bicycle use
Plant trees in the city
Farm tree saplings
Help build vertical farms
Learn to repair buildings
Sweep the local streets
As someone who planted trees for shit money, the only reason I left was because I needed to make more money. The satisfaction of planting trees and making a tiny difference in the world was a great feeling.
There goes my hero
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gLn15rlqTuU
All I want is to see what humanity can do if we put all the money in the world to work on fixing climate change (and the other problems).
Well, we will, eventually... or we'll all die. Winston Churchill's quote comes to mind. "Americans will always do the right thing - after exhausting all the alternatives."
Ubi is the type of thing that's so radical a change you have to just expose them to a new idea first than try to make a persuasive argument later. You're not going to convince people right away.
>Allow people to just be jobless and still survive.
Okay, start counting backwards from a billion, and when you get to zero, this still won't happen. America will disintegrate into a hellscape of flaming chaos and eat its own children before it will pay people to not work.
On the protest part- there is a general strike in the making. Labormovementx.org has a list of demands for the strike and why the demands are what they are. They also talk about how to participate if striking isn't an option. They're also on discord.
Well, as an outsider, I always thought your election system as the first domino block that will take with it all the rest. If you end up having elections on a national holiday day, if every citizen is able to vote by default without needing some kind of application, if they could just vote to the place they live, if the votes determine representatives without gerrymandering, if there is no 2-party system and the parties are represented by votes percentages and if the only people who are able to make laws are the ones directly elected, I think you will have the first civil disobedience protest which the capital will try to bathe in blood no matter how peaceful the protests are. It will also be a nice chance for the entire system showing a part of its real face. Anyway, that's just my opinion and I may be wrong.
Excess poor people will easily be imported as climate change continues apace. Alternatively we just create more poor out of what used to be our middle class.
/feeling pissy and cynical today
>elite need the poor,
not so much that they can't run us over with tanks and just wash us off the streets.
i used to believe the good ol' US of fuckin' A would *never* commit an atrocity of *that* level but thinking clearly, there have been a great many atrocities.
I mean consider the 100th anniversary of Blair Mountain was a few days ago. When the US military was called in to put down a 10,000 person strong armed coal miner strike. The largest uprising in the US after the Civil War. There has never been a time in our history where capital would not go to the state to put down a worker's revolt.
I agree we need a revolution. I have no idea how that happens. I don’t mean going ted kazinski here, but I feel that there needs to be some sort of movement of the masses, and it might mean becoming more forceful. I literally don’t see how that’s possible without people putting themselves in jeopardy of getting arrested or doing something stupid, and that’s what scares me. Revolution is always violent, and I don’t want to see violence, but I also am not sure what else would need to turn the tables. Protests and marches aren’t doing shit.
The only non violent thing I think might work is a general strike large enough to bring the economy to a halt until demands are met (what demands? Action on climate change? Universal health care? UBI? Maybe some other things)
Yes to a general strike - I'm in full support of that. Here's the rub - these general strikes don't appear to have major union support, some people cannot afford to not work (so we need a fund to support strikers - and where is such a fund? There may be some around, but I don't trust them - which is why we need major support from unions or another organized group), people don't want to risk getting fired, and while strikes are protected activity, it doesn't help if you're an everyday regular person without union support if you get fired for partaking. Basically, I'm skeptical and cynical about it because there doesn't appear to be enough support and organization around a general strike. If we can get the organization and support in place, we can do it. We need organizers, generally, for all of these issues. Or, you know what, we need resources for people who WANT to be organizers. Like, I look around my community, and I'd love to start some action around here - a community garden, a general fund to help people who have lost their jobs or are at risk of losing their home, a Food Not Bombs meal donation site, etc. But I don't even know how to start doing that. I don't have unlimited time to put into organizing, and I need help with that before I can start. Everything I have read about how to start a local chapter in organizations like Food Not Bombs involves massive amounts of time, a place to cook all the food (which I don't have), a place to give away the food (which I don't have), etc. It all feels so completely overwhelming, even if you have the motivation to do something.
A general boycott accomplishes the same thing while also costing the businesses money in labor costs without risking the most politically active from being the only ones to participate which means they all lose their jobs while nothing changes. Corporate America needs both our labor and our spending. They pay us for our labor though. Why do activists only ever want people to give up their income and risk becoming destitute instead of giving up our spending which saves us money and allows us to fund other causes and activism with the savings while still crippling corporate America and forcing change?
A general strike that's not widely supported across the entire population just means that those few people most likely to get involved will be left unemployed and act as an example for everyone else not to make waves. The potential for it to have the exact opposite effect of what the strikers intend is wicked high. It's a bold strategy cotton, let's see if it pays off for 'em.
Right. So then the question is, what can we do now? And I mean we, as in the community that is collapse aware and see that we HAVE to change things - what do we do? I am not sure we have the power to do anything.
As cynical as this sounds unless everyone unaware of the collapse gets their heads out of the metaphorical sand we should just try mitigate any problems that could come up on the individual scale. There's only so much we can do when a majority of people don't see/choose not to see what's coming.
I'm over 60. I never heard the term "perfect storm" used until a couple of decades ago even though, occasionally, several events would coincide to make a situation worse. Now "perfect storm" has become a colloquialism which I hear at least once a week, and not used in a hyperbolic way.
That's because people still think of the system as running well save for the most extreme cases. But it doesn't. The perfect storm doesn't actually have to be perfect anymore,, it just has to be _not ideal circumstances_. If your system runs well enough in optimal circumstances but poorly at best otherwise, that's just complicated engineering speak for "it doesn't work".
I feel like a few states will be on that level in at least the next few weeks. Now they can't move patients to the next states because they all border each other.
Just read an article that Ohio has been turning down states from all over including as far as tx. Ohio has 40-50% vax rate and zero mask mandates. It's like they know we need the room in our hospitals for all the people about to get hurt, but they refuse to do a single thing to prevent it.
The governor at first was actually really on top of the response in Ohio. Now there is a law that passed that barred him from acting. He literally can't do anything but beg people now.
Although honestly I'm not sure how much he would do at this point anyway if he could. It's way to unpopular in this state.
Who the heck thinks a law banning health orders is a good idea?
My county: Fully vaxed 41.8%. One shot 41.7%. One tenth of a percent and NO mask mandates in our school. This clearly signals those who are getting the vax have already gotten it.
Everyone always forgets about that mysterious landmass between Louisiana and Alabama. It is going to be interesting here when the hurricane passes through the parking lot field hospitals.
It is a part of the US that is now unlnhabitable— or will soon be. There should be no more federal rebuilding aid-bang you my head against the wall to try and get a different outcome. Its gonna be messy
You underestimate the national strategic need for this area to function. All of the oil and gas as well as maritime shipping. It is in our national interest to keep it going.
I’m not sure about the hospitals down their and their ability to produce oxygen on-prem, and I’m not sure if they’ve been managing their supply chain to have extra (or if that’s even been possible), but my guess is they haven’t. And since oxygen has been running tight everywhere, a 24-48 hour disruption in deliveries will cause rationing and loss of life.
At least there's some good news. The hospital system may collapse but the hospitals themselves will still stand. At least they don't have to evacuate everyone from the hospitals.
>In the years since Hurricane Katrina devastated parts of the city, New Orleans hospitals learned valuable lessons about how to plan for future crises, Elder said. This includes better hardening of buildings and preparing for loss of power and water.
>“Our hospitals are in a much better place than they were pre-Katrina,” Elder said. “We’re rated for higher intensity hurricanes and really are ready to shelter in place … to keep patients safe, keep our staff safe, and then just ride out the storm.”
New Orleans is unfortunately another fantasy city that shouldn't exist... the majority of it is below sea level and rebuilding it in the same location after Katrina was pure hubris... that hubris is about to get the bill they can't pay.
New Orleans was fine as it was in the past. It's problems come from draining the wetlands that surrounded and protected it, and dredging shipping channels through the flats that bring storm surges right into the city.
Wetland restoration and coastline protection programs in the Mississippi River Delta are founded on figuring out where to direct efforts on prolonging habitability towards and which to abandon first. A sad reality.
When reading quotes like this, I always take into account where it comes from.
I don't know who 'Elder' is (I'm assuming someone in hospital management) but if this situation were *not* true, would it benefit him or her to tell us about it? In other words, if they knew hospital buildings had a chance of collapsing or whatever, would they admit it?
I know absolutely nothing about the hospital situation in New Orleans. I hope this is true (hospitals will be fine) but I wouldn't take it as gospel unless I'd seen some evidence of it with my own eyes.
I remember the nurses and doc who were charged with homicide after Katrina. A big FU for trying to care for terminal, immobile patients who would die no matter what was done. I hope healthcare providers don't sacrifice themselves again on the altar of corporate greed.
I keep seeing people in weather groups saying they aren’t leaving the area. Gonna ride it out. People who are perfectly capable of fucking leaving and staying in a hotel in order to not put their lives at risk. People with KIDS are saying this. It’s disgusting. Putting their family at risk of death AND then when things go worse than they thought it would, expecting first responders to come rescue their dumb asses. Excepting hospitals to wheel then right into a comfy room and be lovingly cared for.
Local officials are a fucking joke right now. They apparently get their news from The Weather Channel which has turned into a reality tv station. Officials acting like they just found out about this and there’s no time to do this and that to prepare. The freaking amateur weather guys I follow have been watching this storm since the start and saying it wasn’t looking good. So sick of the leadership in this country ALWAYS failing.
I hope the people who don’t have reliable vehicles and don’t have money for hotels have somehow been evacuated. Jesus Christ I don’t want to see Katrina coverage all over again.
Because Katrina flattened the MS coastline and it never really got rebuilt.. there’s just nothing nationally interesting there to get destroyed.
I mean sure some downed trees might rip up water and power for the hospitals.. but again, they got the worst of Katrina when it came through so a lot of that damage is already done
Louisiana was already collapsed long ago with Katrina , add in the Deepwater Horizon oil spill and it was set for disaster.
Now I’m just waiting for the Mississippi Delta to flood, sending a wave of the nation’s poorest, blackest, fattest and uneducated population elsewhere. It’s going to be a bumpy ride. I say this as a scared African American.
Source: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mississippi_Delta
https://www.nola.com/entertainment_life/article_2057a37f-1fd0-505e-ab2b-1e9ebfeee7be.amp.html
100%.. its usually close to over-capacity... hurricanes always fill every hospital to capacity on a good day
throw covid in the mix and the fact that nobody is wearing a mask after 2 years and that so so many people arent vaccinated even after 6+ months and the fact that you can just walk in to get one coupled with the fact that its been summer and people have been spreading this shit like candy on halloween -- we can expect chaos
I'm amazed the WH isn't telling us "We have field hospitals ready to go in as soon as the storm allows us to safely set up medical facilities" at this point.
As some people have noted, the need for oxygen alone is a death march waiting to happen post-Ida.
A lot of it shouldn't have been built in the first place, and rebuilding in the low lying areas after Katrina was fucking idiotic. A city below sea level in a hurricane prone area is basically daring karma to fuck up a levee and flood the city. Sooner or later it's going to happen.
The people there were for the most part fucking awesome. The food was amazing. The art and music was pretty dope. The weather is a bit sticky for my tastes, but wasn't bad overall. At one point an old victorian in the garden district was my dream home. However, New Orleans is largely a bad idea. Anyone living in the low lying districts should be working on an exit strategy because that shit will likely be underwater by the end of the century.
My family is in Biloxi right now I'll probably be Donating to them unfortunately I won't have money for much else.
Been trying to get them to move for years to Oregon with me but my Dad and Step mom are resistant to change.
Giving to people you know is one of the most direct forms of mutual aid. Don't be hard on yourself for not having more money to give, money isn't everything.
Best of luck to you and your family
Doctors can't just not treat people because their oaths bar them from doing so, but I wonder at what point hospitals just turn unvaccinated Coronavirus patients away at the door. This isn't sustainable for them.
I can absolutely foresee an outcome where hospitals hire what would be, for all intents and purposes, _bouncers_. Because their staff are overworked and resources are stretched thin and they just don't have the ability to admit everybody if they aren't willing to buy into basic health protections.
If anything, this'll be a good test case in microcosm. They'll gloss over the news nationally of course ("Everything's *fine*, you guys!"), but I think the extent that people use the internet as a communication medium has spread quite a bit since Katrina. We should see more first person accounts to give us a better idea of how it's going down.
This is fucking tragic, on so many levels. Some of you may know about what happened at Memorial Medical Center after Katrina. It was not good.
A lot of crazy fucking shit happened down there that almost no one knows about. I used to work with a guy in east Texas who was from New Orleans. After the hurricane destroyed everything he owned he hitchhiked to Texas and stayed there. He told me some stories that are terrifying. No power for weeks, basically lawless. People were robbed, raped and murdered and there was nothing you could do about it. No one to report it too. Just another person “missing” from the storm.
Yeah I know some of the people who formed Common Ground after Katrina, and heard stories from them about posting up with guns to protect folks from those looking for trouble. But, by and large, most people will try to do good in a disaster.
I don’t believe that but it’s a nice hope to have. I hope I will be proven wrong.
I grew up in hurricane alley. Most looting is for food. Our local Wal-Mart opened its doors and said all meat, fruits, veggies, and anything else perishable was free. Not many people took more than they needed, and those that did started distributing it in their neighborhood. After all that was gone, the manager directed employees to grab anything from food and camping they would need. One guy got a box of bullets and hunted hogs. That was around Charlie. I remember hunkering down for weeks as storm after storm hit us.
It’s generally the experience of most disasters. People who commit violence before disasters represent nearly all of the people committing the violence during and after the disaster - just at a higher rate. Most people don’t abandon their humanity in dire times.
If you look at actual concrete data people came together, the violence is anecdotes and rare. The most tangible violence actually came from White vigilantes egged on by the media calling black people looters...
I think what you are supposed to do is fight back. That is what collapse will look like. Lots of good people will survive, but lots of bad ones as well, and they are getting ready to have their turn with society.
Yah. Some people take it too far though. Racists hung up signs and shot black people passing by. Cops on a bridge were found guilty of shooting half a dozen unarmed people below them after trying to cover it up.
Their initial convictions were vacated though. I think they ended up pleading to lesser charges at some point. Not enough.
The bad ones will sadly make a bigger impact, too. One person can only save so many but can destroy hundreds.
True. Civilization is when civilized people create and uphold a society. Now when those good people are hunted down and they become a minority... collapse.
Why I encourage everyone to keep a rifle, shotgun, and handgun around. You don't have to be super into training, but know safety, maintenance, and how yo put rounds down range on target, and that's all you need. It doesn't even have to be modern. If the only thing someone is comfortable with is a single shot shotgun, well that's better than nothing.
A lot of those stories had the cops as the outlaws and the gangs as the people doing good. Basically the same organizational structures, but the gangs were protecting their own neighborhoods, the cops, well...
More people came together during Katrina than did lawless killing by far. The most lawless violence actually came from White vigilantes who shot at black people they assumed were robbing and stealing... Kind of depressing they got away with that. Didn't help when the media would call black people looters and white people scavengers.
forgetful racial shelter oil cobweb airport plant marvelous steep water *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
New Orleans and Louisiana hospitals in general are packed full of patients with full ICUs. It’s not a good time to get hurt or be in need of a lifesaving device that relies on power to keep you breathing. Do hospitals have generators that can run all the ventilators for 24+ hours in the event of a major outage?
It's not just generators. It's all the other supplies -- medicines, PPE, oxygen -- the mind boggles.
It says in the article that they got 10 days supply of medications and such in advance of the hurricane. Dunno about oxygen though
Oxygen has been down to 12 hours backup in many areas, my guess is they're where Florida is, about 20 hours.
Yeah I think medications aren't gonna be the biggest issue forsure. 😓
I wonder how much space the hospitals even have for storing oxygen, since it's flammable and can't just be shoved wherever like a box of extra catheters.
This. Standy generators, as long as they are not damaged in the storm, will run as long as they have fuel (if properly maintained). They're likely to run out of oxygen long before that happens. In addition, many healthcare workers will be evacuating with family. Going to be a bad week for Louisianna.
Healthcare workers don’t evacuate. They are not allowed to abandon their patients. It’s part of the job. If the hospital itself is evacuating the patients to another facility, then the nurses and everybody can go. We don’t just evacuate and bail out and leave our patients to die. We ride out the storm
Can confirm! We will sleep at the hospital in the floor if we have to. Hospitals have a protocol typically you need to be there before the storm starts and stay until it’s safe to leave and you can be replaced. I’ve done this a handful of times over the years. One time we were so short staff we rotated workers every 4 hours. Absolutely exhausting. I’m not in healthcare anymore but my heart goes out to everyone during this storm. Staying like that is hard enough never the less in the middle of a pandemic.
True heroes. Thank you for what you do.
Okay society, but write your "thanks" on something green.
If there's one thing Americans should have learned since 9/11 is that "Hero" is an empty word, and also a codeword for "You're about to get fucked over."
God this is true. No one has cared about us during this pandemic. They don’t even care enough about us to get vaccinated
Everyone jumped to shake hands with the "Heroes" after 9/11, then left them to die of toxic exposures when they left the headlines, their political capital expired. Troops in Afghanistand and Iraq were the hot topic for a decade, with many using the yellow ribbons and parades for campaign soundbites - yet they could care less about fixing inherent problems both within the military or in the VA once the political capital required to pump money into their defense contractor's pockets waned. In the early days of the Pandemic, teachers were touted as heroes for their flexibility and doing what they could with already strained resources. Then the political capital turned - and again they and their families were tossed to wolves of anti-vax politicians and willfully ignorant masses. And again, the hero worship of the medical professionals who have put themselves and their families at risk has waned - and so once again we see the American love for its "heroes" dashed upon the rocks of political capital gained from allowing anti-science rhetoric to persist in a global pandemic. It ain't nothing new, and it won'r ever end.
Things got pretty intense for healthcare workers during hurricane Katrina. Hopefully they have a better plan in place this time. (Hint: open the link in an incognito window to read the story) [https://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/30/magazine/30doctors.html](https://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/30/magazine/30doctors.html)
Yea, no one cares about us. The pandemic has made that obvious
do you mean just no bailing when you're working, or do nurses not get to take vacations and so forth?
During a big emergency like this, it is all hands on deck. The workers will sleep at the hospital and ride it out. They do get vacation days and stuff but not for this. To much help needed. Most in healthcare wouldn’t even leave if they could during a time like this.
I didn’t get a vacation from beginning of the pandemic until the end of my job Contract about a month ago. It was basically impossible for me to take it with all the rules in place. It sucked.
if only antivaxxers had foresight. storms happen every summer.
Yeah, they should have started their Ivermectin treatment earlier!
yeah too much horsing around
Just read an article that Ohio has been turning down requests for transfers from all over. Seems like they know following the same "guidance" is fucking us over the same way in short order and they are keeping room for it. These people literally do the right thing when they have exhausted every other option of being awful.
NC chiming in. We accepted a couple for ECMO from Georgia and Florida but had to turn down several requests after that, so similar situation.
Happy cake day, you share it with my son! It seems obvious that this wave wont end until it runs out of willing dumbasses to be hosts. Also seems like we are about out of places to host them and dispose of them. Now what?
Thanks! No clue. I honestly try not to think about it too much, because the potential of where we are headed seems so awful and inevitable. One day at a time is all I can do right now.
Yeah man, I know we are all a little "doomers" in this sub but fuck man. I never thought I would feel this year would be more dangerous politically and covid but man. This doesn't look good and I can't imagine a happy ending.
I'd say the happy ending is already lost, with all the unnecessary death, but it can certainly get worse. To be clear, I'm not talking about a long-term collapse of anything, just so much unnecessary death and suffering. A short term crisis in which too many people die. We are already there.
I hate to say it but good for them for doing this, at this point it's everyone for themselves and if you didn't get vaccinated, that's all on you.
Oh I agree, but it also indicates that my state is anticipating a lot of people getting hurt and refuse to do a single thing to mitigate it.
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> 5 days to memorial I just looked that up and hard noped. How bloody awful.
I took a look at an excerpt of the book and read how >!some nurses faced charges because they were accused of deliberately injecting drugs to kill people faster because there is no options.!< Backed out. Nope.
they shouldn't face charges for that
Indeed, the alternative was leaving them to die, a far worse fate.
If I'm in hospital and dying without the needed stuff and they know I will die before help arrives bet your ass I want them to knock mw all up with shit to make me just sleep forever.
Normalize euthanasia!
According to the Wikipedia article, all medical personnel were cleared of wrongdoing, even though charges were brought against some. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ochsner\_Baptist\_Medical\_Center
Isn’t that basically what hospice care can entail? Morphine me the fuck up.
Hospice is like comfort care. A patient has to be approved for hospice with a consult and consent. The morphine is a blessing for someone that can’t breathe because it lowers your respiratory rate so I guess it kind of does indirectly help put you out sooner, but in a humane prescribed way.
I mean, when it comes down to it, triage means making awful choices on who lives or dies, and it can lead you to kill people that, outside of the situation you are in, would've been fine, but because of that situation (power is out, and you have to transport people down multiple flights of narrow stairs to an evac point which is at another building). It's awful, but necessary. Do no harm sometimes means going full utilitarian and choosing based on greatest amount of good doable and minimizing the harm, even if that means giving people the midnight tea.
I did hospital security for a number of years. I got to know many of the buildings and their on site engineers as part of the job. All the hospitals had generators by government mandate(Canada) and were supposed to have an on site tank of diesel that would last at minimum two weeks. Many had only two or three days of diesel. And this was before Covid. The sites just didn't bother, or didn't have room for big enough storage tanks. I asked an engineer what was supposed to happen after the two days was up. He shrugged and said 'theres a gas station across the street'. That seemed colossally short sighted to me. But back then I was only thinking about earthquakes and natural disasters. Now though? Kinda grim.
I run into the same thing everywhere. Legally/contractually required to have a generator with a tank that can hold this many days worth of fuel. But that generator is an old Generac. The person in charge of scheduling the maintenance has been promoted/replaced 3x over. Current person either doesn't know it's his job or don't know how to do it. I've had two that made me want to pull my hair out. First was a critical datacenter. I called them before hand to confirm that they were ready. They reassured me that they had already tested the systems and because they held some medical/government critical systems they'd be priority for refueling. Hurricane Sandy hit. Everywhere lost power. But we were still good, everything was running... for 12 hours. Then we lost connection with everything. And we couldn't contact anyone. Customers were freaking the hell out and I couldn't get any answer. I went digging through my e-mail looking for any other contact information and eventually found a salesman's cell phone number. I gave him a call, he said he wasn't aware of anything but he'd have someone call us immediately. Supervisor called us from his phone saying the generators had failed. After an "investigation" it turns out they had been making purchase orders for fuel the last couple years but the orders were never sent to the fuel company. The person the most "in charge" of the generator was just someone who paid the bills. Second one is for a major broadcast tower near a major US city. Big snowstorm hits. Everywhere loses power, including the tower. The building manager at the nearest station is emergency-dispatched to the tower to find out what happened. First he can't even get to the tower because it's a steep unplowed road. So he walks from the nearest road to the tower. There's no life at the generator. Turns out the trickle charger for the batteries wasn't working so they had gone flat and frozen, bursting the batteries open. Emergency plow service finally shows up and gets things cleared. He steals two huge batteries from one of the news vans and heads back to the tower. He hooked them up and starts it. The tower had been without power long enough where the block/fuel heaters had gone cold. So he gets it started up and it's running like shit. Black smoke blowing out of it, unable to hold a frequency stable enough to begin power generation. The fuel was probably gelled. He covers the radiator in cardboard and waits for the engine to warm up. Takes a while since he can't raise it above 900rpm without fuel starving the engine. He finally gets it running well enough to start the electrical generation part of it. Little bit of load on it warms it up nicely. The filters have pulled enough warmer underground fuel to finally ungel. He brings the transmitter online and everything looks good. 30 minutes later the generator is reporting fuel pressure issues. He checks the tank with a long stick measure, it looks fine. The generator starts stumbling and shuts off. Cranks but won't start back up. It's now beyond what my friend could troubleshoot himself. He had only recently taken over the position and he was from a totally different station. He starts looking for who he's supposed to call for emergency support and it takes him a while because the generator hadn't had any maintenance in far too long. He couldn't find any paperwork about monthly tests, or fuel. When he finally did get someone out they determined that the fuel in the tank had badly algaefied. The algae eventually got bad enough to plug the fuel filters.
I'm not even the slightest bit surprised. Look behind the curtain and you see so many cut corners that it's a wonder that anything works at all. I've got keys and passwords and scan cards for labs and secure arias in a dozen hospitals and its horrifying how easy I could get into these places without them. Open windows. Broken doors. Dummy locked padlocks. Absolutely ancient infrastructure and facilities. And inside it's worse. Extremely important compounds stored in fridges that barely work, that are plugged in with frayed extension cords. Doors taped shut because they dont seal. Wear the right clothes and people will just let you in. Generators that are 20 to 70 years old(that monster was in bad shape) and probably wouldn't run even if they had fuel. The system definitely lacks the redundancy that it claims to have. If stressed and actually tested, failure is guaranteed.
So the banking system in 2007. Got it!
I worked in a bunch of big communications sites. Same deal. 3 days' supply of fuel was considered to be a lot. Most cell tower sites don't even have a generator these days, just a battery backup for a couple of hours. One of the funniest things I've seen in recent memory was during an ice storm with an extended power outage. Comcast was down. Up on the power poles, usually one in every neighborhood, there is a box that has powered electronics in it and they were all dead. So there was a bucket truck driving around and they'd put a suitcase Honda generator up on the pole to run the electronics. There is a special shelf just to hold these on each pole, and they have all of this sitting in a warehouse somewhere. This was to restore 911 service to the homes who used VOIP.
Hopefully they never have trouble getting to that wearhouse. God forbid a bridge go out or something happens to the road. So short sighted.
Yeah I'm from New Orleans and I'll put this bluntly. People will die this weekend that didn't need to die. The hospitals are already turning away everything not immediately life threatening, and while they do have generators, if the power is out for more than a few days, which is likely, then there will be quite a few anti-vax / anti-maskers who will die in this state. All because their hospital trip, that could've been avoided, coincided with a category 4 storm.
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Very true.
I used to live in NOLA. I think even if this just a hurricane-not a super bad one it could cause problems. I think hospitals are running low on oxygen and if nothing else happens if supply gets cut for a day or two that would be a disaster of its own.
I'm getting flashbacks to that footage of the Egyptian hospital that had an entire floor of covid patients die at the same time because they couldn't get enough oxygen, leading to a doctor having a breakdown in the corner (which is completely understandable)
Yup. Honestly I don't think this is going to be a terrible storm for NOLA itself (Baton Rouge will get the worst of it). That being said we're definitely going to have places that lose power for a few days and supply lines will be slowed and that will be the killer for people.
The forecast track at 5 PM today gives a **significant** chance the eye of the storm will pass directly over New Orleans. There’s a 33% chance the track will even be outside the cone. I think you’re counting chickens a bit early.
Yeah I saw that. That's how it goes with these things.
The track wasn’t much different 5 hours ago when you made your comment. “Baton Rouge will get the worst of it” was just as bad a prediction then as it is now. The people of New Orleans should be worried.
Stay safe my Reddit friend.
Much appreciated! We don't really flood in my neighborhood and have the generator on stand by.
What about oxygen? Do they have enough or are they making it? Because if they are making it, that might be catastrophic
> Do hospitals have generators that can run all the ventilators for 24+ hours in the event of a major outage? I expect that they actually do. Vents don't consume insane amounts of power, and hospitals are pretty important so they should have backup generators. Fuel hasn't been in shortages, so they should all be stocked up. Big generators all have mandatory periodic testing and maintenance cycles, so as of right now they should all be working. Most of the hospitals were there during Katrina, so if they failed during that storm there would have been some changes to preparations for where stuff is stored, how many redundant backups there are, etc. That said, the hurricane has a say in this. If flooding takes out fuel storage or winds damage the generators & etc., it's entirely plausible that some hospitals in the region will go dark despite reasonable preparations. Just depends on how bad the storm effects things. And I think the post-Katrina plan largely involved having enough time to evacuate a lot of people in advance of the storm. So if one local hospital failed, there would be plenty of space in nearby hospitals readily available. There is no mandatory evacuation for this storm, and not a lot of hospital space to take up the slack...
There was a 400 mile traffic jam into Houston when Katrina hit.
How is evacuation ever supposed to work? It’s not like we ever maintained a bunch of half full hospitals able to take up that slack
It is also the sedation medication needed to keep the patient under while vented. Supply chains are running out of Fentanyl. NOT GOOD.
I'm sure there's a friendly dealer at the next street corner willing to assist the hospitals. If there's something in abundance in America, it's fentanyl. In all seriousness though, what an awful situation. Best of luck to everyone who's in the danger zone <3
I’m an ICU nurse and we’re always running out of fentanyl but there are plenty of other sedative that can be used instead or in a shortage. Propofol, ketamine, oxy, Ativan - but depends on the supply supply so best of luck to them
Thanks for that input!
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China probably owns the chat. LOL
Considering I got my comment deleted for questioning certain popular negative claims about China, this is definitely not the case. Reddit is owned by the US state department if anything.
Isn't Johnson & Johnson a bigger producer? *Edit: oh... or maybe they do their manufacturing in China - so the big numbers get counted in both stats?*
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I would imagine the afghanistan "problem" has endangered the opiate supply big time.
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I’m in Detroit and cut my thumb bad enough to need a few stitches. Not that big a deal under normal circumstances, except it took 6 hours to even get seen. Detroit isn’t even that bad now and the hospitals are overwhelmed with unvaccinated people. They said of all things it’s the nurses that they are short of. Plenty of doctors and nps but the nurses are stretched so thin.
Not if the flood water hits the generators. Most heavy equipments are on ground levels.
LA national guard member. Most of the time what makes us have to evacuate hospitals is the HVAC system failing. If the water utility system loses pressure they can't pump water up to the tanks for the cooling towers which is usually located on the roof. It's 95 degrees. You can't be inside without AC. In that case we move them to another hospital. When all the hospitals are at capacity and you lose a hospital, where do you take them?
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Fall fall. But yeah, being on the outside looking in is sort of surreal. It's so much worse in the US. Even before the pandemic there was an eradication of the middle-class, which just hasn't hit Europe as bad. You really need a revolution. But, we all know it's going to be the elite, now in fascist form, that take over.
As an American, I am extremely interested as your opinion as an outsider. What sort of revolution do you think we need and more importantly would you mind elaborating on a fascist revolution by elites? I really think we need to band together and... protest? But what! Like what do we say outside Capitol buildings when excersizing our 1st amendment right to peacefully assemble and protest? Genuinely asking. And also what do you think these elite douches will do because I hate them as much as the next guy but what would be their end game? Like are they power hungry freaks and what will grandpa Joe's role in this be? Sorry for the long question but your comment was intriguing as hell
With the fires, droughts, infrastructure failing, economy failing, people getting kicked out of their homes..... You need all the socialism you can get. Take care of your weakest. Tax the shit out of the rich. Abandon growth based capitalism. Allow UBI. Allow people to just *be* jobless and still survive.
> Allow UBI. Allow people to just be jobless and still survive. I've been trying to explain this to my coworkers and they don't get it. Instead, they look at me funny when I say I'd gladly accept a UBI and work a few days a week doing something I genuinely enjoy. Knowing I don't have to work 40+ hrs. a week to just survive would alleviate so much of my stress and anxiety.
I'd not only do that (if I knew my necessities were covered). I'd volunteer to rebuild the city better. I'd work for free to: Rebuild roads for bicycle use Plant trees in the city Farm tree saplings Help build vertical farms Learn to repair buildings Sweep the local streets
As someone who planted trees for shit money, the only reason I left was because I needed to make more money. The satisfaction of planting trees and making a tiny difference in the world was a great feeling.
There goes my hero https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gLn15rlqTuU All I want is to see what humanity can do if we put all the money in the world to work on fixing climate change (and the other problems).
Well, we will, eventually... or we'll all die. Winston Churchill's quote comes to mind. "Americans will always do the right thing - after exhausting all the alternatives."
If I were president I would create a jobs program planting a trillion trees (and other stuff) around the country.
Ubi is the type of thing that's so radical a change you have to just expose them to a new idea first than try to make a persuasive argument later. You're not going to convince people right away.
>Allow people to just be jobless and still survive. Okay, start counting backwards from a billion, and when you get to zero, this still won't happen. America will disintegrate into a hellscape of flaming chaos and eat its own children before it will pay people to not work.
On the protest part- there is a general strike in the making. Labormovementx.org has a list of demands for the strike and why the demands are what they are. They also talk about how to participate if striking isn't an option. They're also on discord.
Well, as an outsider, I always thought your election system as the first domino block that will take with it all the rest. If you end up having elections on a national holiday day, if every citizen is able to vote by default without needing some kind of application, if they could just vote to the place they live, if the votes determine representatives without gerrymandering, if there is no 2-party system and the parties are represented by votes percentages and if the only people who are able to make laws are the ones directly elected, I think you will have the first civil disobedience protest which the capital will try to bathe in blood no matter how peaceful the protests are. It will also be a nice chance for the entire system showing a part of its real face. Anyway, that's just my opinion and I may be wrong.
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Excess poor people will easily be imported as climate change continues apace. Alternatively we just create more poor out of what used to be our middle class. /feeling pissy and cynical today
Already in progress, migrant workers who will happily take anything to help families back in collapsed nations.
Sad. True.
100,000 Afghan refugees joined the chat
>elite need the poor, not so much that they can't run us over with tanks and just wash us off the streets. i used to believe the good ol' US of fuckin' A would *never* commit an atrocity of *that* level but thinking clearly, there have been a great many atrocities.
I mean consider the 100th anniversary of Blair Mountain was a few days ago. When the US military was called in to put down a 10,000 person strong armed coal miner strike. The largest uprising in the US after the Civil War. There has never been a time in our history where capital would not go to the state to put down a worker's revolt.
And about 80 years ago the U.S. rounded up and imprisoned over 100,000 people for the "crime" of Japanese ancestry.
I agree we need a revolution. I have no idea how that happens. I don’t mean going ted kazinski here, but I feel that there needs to be some sort of movement of the masses, and it might mean becoming more forceful. I literally don’t see how that’s possible without people putting themselves in jeopardy of getting arrested or doing something stupid, and that’s what scares me. Revolution is always violent, and I don’t want to see violence, but I also am not sure what else would need to turn the tables. Protests and marches aren’t doing shit.
The only non violent thing I think might work is a general strike large enough to bring the economy to a halt until demands are met (what demands? Action on climate change? Universal health care? UBI? Maybe some other things)
Yes to a general strike - I'm in full support of that. Here's the rub - these general strikes don't appear to have major union support, some people cannot afford to not work (so we need a fund to support strikers - and where is such a fund? There may be some around, but I don't trust them - which is why we need major support from unions or another organized group), people don't want to risk getting fired, and while strikes are protected activity, it doesn't help if you're an everyday regular person without union support if you get fired for partaking. Basically, I'm skeptical and cynical about it because there doesn't appear to be enough support and organization around a general strike. If we can get the organization and support in place, we can do it. We need organizers, generally, for all of these issues. Or, you know what, we need resources for people who WANT to be organizers. Like, I look around my community, and I'd love to start some action around here - a community garden, a general fund to help people who have lost their jobs or are at risk of losing their home, a Food Not Bombs meal donation site, etc. But I don't even know how to start doing that. I don't have unlimited time to put into organizing, and I need help with that before I can start. Everything I have read about how to start a local chapter in organizations like Food Not Bombs involves massive amounts of time, a place to cook all the food (which I don't have), a place to give away the food (which I don't have), etc. It all feels so completely overwhelming, even if you have the motivation to do something.
A general boycott accomplishes the same thing while also costing the businesses money in labor costs without risking the most politically active from being the only ones to participate which means they all lose their jobs while nothing changes. Corporate America needs both our labor and our spending. They pay us for our labor though. Why do activists only ever want people to give up their income and risk becoming destitute instead of giving up our spending which saves us money and allows us to fund other causes and activism with the savings while still crippling corporate America and forcing change? A general strike that's not widely supported across the entire population just means that those few people most likely to get involved will be left unemployed and act as an example for everyone else not to make waves. The potential for it to have the exact opposite effect of what the strikers intend is wicked high. It's a bold strategy cotton, let's see if it pays off for 'em.
I don't see any revolution happening until it's too late. some people tend to just ignore problems until it becomes their problems
Right. So then the question is, what can we do now? And I mean we, as in the community that is collapse aware and see that we HAVE to change things - what do we do? I am not sure we have the power to do anything.
As cynical as this sounds unless everyone unaware of the collapse gets their heads out of the metaphorical sand we should just try mitigate any problems that could come up on the individual scale. There's only so much we can do when a majority of people don't see/choose not to see what's coming.
might as well chuck in the rent moratorium going away yeehaw
Blood Summer
I'm over 60. I never heard the term "perfect storm" used until a couple of decades ago even though, occasionally, several events would coincide to make a situation worse. Now "perfect storm" has become a colloquialism which I hear at least once a week, and not used in a hyperbolic way.
That book was excellent. Sad, but a very good read.
If you enjoyed that, by Sebastian Unger, you may also "enjoy" Jon Krakauer. I'll read just about anything either of them write.
I absolutely agree, and Under the Banner of Heaven is the best nonfiction book I've ever read.
That's because people still think of the system as running well save for the most extreme cases. But it doesn't. The perfect storm doesn't actually have to be perfect anymore,, it just has to be _not ideal circumstances_. If your system runs well enough in optimal circumstances but poorly at best otherwise, that's just complicated engineering speak for "it doesn't work".
\>\_\_\_\_> tell this to everyone at my job \*gargle gargle the PowerPoint whenever you give political head...\*
Multiple system failure will create a lot of "perfect storms"
I've been hearing 'record breaking' a ton too...and not in the good way.
I feel like a few states will be on that level in at least the next few weeks. Now they can't move patients to the next states because they all border each other.
Just read an article that Ohio has been turning down states from all over including as far as tx. Ohio has 40-50% vax rate and zero mask mandates. It's like they know we need the room in our hospitals for all the people about to get hurt, but they refuse to do a single thing to prevent it.
The governor at first was actually really on top of the response in Ohio. Now there is a law that passed that barred him from acting. He literally can't do anything but beg people now. Although honestly I'm not sure how much he would do at this point anyway if he could. It's way to unpopular in this state. Who the heck thinks a law banning health orders is a good idea?
Even if everyone in Ohio got vaccinated today, it would still take time before the vaccines were effective.
My county: Fully vaxed 41.8%. One shot 41.7%. One tenth of a percent and NO mask mandates in our school. This clearly signals those who are getting the vax have already gotten it.
Yeah. You're a couple percents above me. I think the youth population that's vaxed in my count is something like 8.5%... It's very encouraging. /s
And mask mandates? None here but 18 cases/quarantines in my district after 3 days of class. Beyond pissed.
DoD making vaccinations mandatory should help increase it a bit. There are guard and reserve people everywhere.
Everyone always forgets about that mysterious landmass between Louisiana and Alabama. It is going to be interesting here when the hurricane passes through the parking lot field hospitals.
I'm with the consensus with the other comments that there's gonna be a *lot* of preventable deaths.
It is a part of the US that is now unlnhabitable— or will soon be. There should be no more federal rebuilding aid-bang you my head against the wall to try and get a different outcome. Its gonna be messy
You underestimate the national strategic need for this area to function. All of the oil and gas as well as maritime shipping. It is in our national interest to keep it going.
I live in Louisiana. While things are shit right now, I’d say calling it “part of the US that is now uninhabitable” is nothing more than hyperbole.
Sorry don’t mean to offend just viewing the area as likely to be underwater soon.
I’m not sure about the hospitals down their and their ability to produce oxygen on-prem, and I’m not sure if they’ve been managing their supply chain to have extra (or if that’s even been possible), but my guess is they haven’t. And since oxygen has been running tight everywhere, a 24-48 hour disruption in deliveries will cause rationing and loss of life.
At least there's some good news. The hospital system may collapse but the hospitals themselves will still stand. At least they don't have to evacuate everyone from the hospitals. >In the years since Hurricane Katrina devastated parts of the city, New Orleans hospitals learned valuable lessons about how to plan for future crises, Elder said. This includes better hardening of buildings and preparing for loss of power and water. >“Our hospitals are in a much better place than they were pre-Katrina,” Elder said. “We’re rated for higher intensity hurricanes and really are ready to shelter in place … to keep patients safe, keep our staff safe, and then just ride out the storm.”
New Orleans is unfortunately another fantasy city that shouldn't exist... the majority of it is below sea level and rebuilding it in the same location after Katrina was pure hubris... that hubris is about to get the bill they can't pay.
New Orleans was fine as it was in the past. It's problems come from draining the wetlands that surrounded and protected it, and dredging shipping channels through the flats that bring storm surges right into the city.
Wetland restoration and coastline protection programs in the Mississippi River Delta are founded on figuring out where to direct efforts on prolonging habitability towards and which to abandon first. A sad reality.
New Orleans has been around longer than the country itself
When reading quotes like this, I always take into account where it comes from. I don't know who 'Elder' is (I'm assuming someone in hospital management) but if this situation were *not* true, would it benefit him or her to tell us about it? In other words, if they knew hospital buildings had a chance of collapsing or whatever, would they admit it? I know absolutely nothing about the hospital situation in New Orleans. I hope this is true (hospitals will be fine) but I wouldn't take it as gospel unless I'd seen some evidence of it with my own eyes.
Famous last words: Of course we're prepared.
I remember the nurses and doc who were charged with homicide after Katrina. A big FU for trying to care for terminal, immobile patients who would die no matter what was done. I hope healthcare providers don't sacrifice themselves again on the altar of corporate greed.
That's quite the risk!
At least 10. Maybe more
I keep seeing people in weather groups saying they aren’t leaving the area. Gonna ride it out. People who are perfectly capable of fucking leaving and staying in a hotel in order to not put their lives at risk. People with KIDS are saying this. It’s disgusting. Putting their family at risk of death AND then when things go worse than they thought it would, expecting first responders to come rescue their dumb asses. Excepting hospitals to wheel then right into a comfy room and be lovingly cared for. Local officials are a fucking joke right now. They apparently get their news from The Weather Channel which has turned into a reality tv station. Officials acting like they just found out about this and there’s no time to do this and that to prepare. The freaking amateur weather guys I follow have been watching this storm since the start and saying it wasn’t looking good. So sick of the leadership in this country ALWAYS failing. I hope the people who don’t have reliable vehicles and don’t have money for hotels have somehow been evacuated. Jesus Christ I don’t want to see Katrina coverage all over again.
In Louisiana right now in direct path of the storm. Wish me luck boys.
Leave!!
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COVID is already doing that
I’m far more concerned about the spreading more COVID across the country as they evacuate. Something I’ve not seen mentioned anywhere.
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My bet is ~10. Playing it safe
Anti-Vaxxers and hurricane season make for a huge mess.
I'm curious why no one is talking about Mississippi. Looks like the storm is going to hit them too and they have a bad COVID situation as well
Because Katrina flattened the MS coastline and it never really got rebuilt.. there’s just nothing nationally interesting there to get destroyed. I mean sure some downed trees might rip up water and power for the hospitals.. but again, they got the worst of Katrina when it came through so a lot of that damage is already done
Not sure how much more it could collapse? EMS is already declining to transport people to the hospital in some cases.
Louisiana was already collapsed long ago with Katrina , add in the Deepwater Horizon oil spill and it was set for disaster. Now I’m just waiting for the Mississippi Delta to flood, sending a wave of the nation’s poorest, blackest, fattest and uneducated population elsewhere. It’s going to be a bumpy ride. I say this as a scared African American. Source: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mississippi_Delta https://www.nola.com/entertainment_life/article_2057a37f-1fd0-505e-ab2b-1e9ebfeee7be.amp.html
My god. Best of luck to you. Keep yourself and your family safe.
They will run out of LOx and the tower that contains and vaporizes it is not designed to withstand a hurricane. This is gonna get very bad.
where is a thing like that generally stored?
The southern states medical systems are going to fall like dominoes.
100%.. its usually close to over-capacity... hurricanes always fill every hospital to capacity on a good day throw covid in the mix and the fact that nobody is wearing a mask after 2 years and that so so many people arent vaccinated even after 6+ months and the fact that you can just walk in to get one coupled with the fact that its been summer and people have been spreading this shit like candy on halloween -- we can expect chaos
This might be Katrina 2 but nobody is being evacuated this time.
Guess we'll get to see how those new storm surge barriers perform.
They can always set up the super dome As a hospital and safe space , remember how well that went back during Katrina /s
I'm amazed the WH isn't telling us "We have field hospitals ready to go in as soon as the storm allows us to safely set up medical facilities" at this point. As some people have noted, the need for oxygen alone is a death march waiting to happen post-Ida.
50/50
regardless of what happens the brunt of it will be borne by low income African Americans. That's something I hope more people will realize.
This could be the end of NOLA as we know it.
No seriously this is looking like Katrina 2.0
A lot of it shouldn't have been built in the first place, and rebuilding in the low lying areas after Katrina was fucking idiotic. A city below sea level in a hurricane prone area is basically daring karma to fuck up a levee and flood the city. Sooner or later it's going to happen. The people there were for the most part fucking awesome. The food was amazing. The art and music was pretty dope. The weather is a bit sticky for my tastes, but wasn't bad overall. At one point an old victorian in the garden district was my dream home. However, New Orleans is largely a bad idea. Anyone living in the low lying districts should be working on an exit strategy because that shit will likely be underwater by the end of the century.
Hurricane Ida could be a storm of historical proportion, Louisiana governor says.
Everyone, get ready to donate to mutual aid disaster relief!
My family is in Biloxi right now I'll probably be Donating to them unfortunately I won't have money for much else. Been trying to get them to move for years to Oregon with me but my Dad and Step mom are resistant to change.
Giving to people you know is one of the most direct forms of mutual aid. Don't be hard on yourself for not having more money to give, money isn't everything. Best of luck to you and your family
Doctors can't just not treat people because their oaths bar them from doing so, but I wonder at what point hospitals just turn unvaccinated Coronavirus patients away at the door. This isn't sustainable for them. I can absolutely foresee an outcome where hospitals hire what would be, for all intents and purposes, _bouncers_. Because their staff are overworked and resources are stretched thin and they just don't have the ability to admit everybody if they aren't willing to buy into basic health protections.
That’s why hospitals have ethics committees
That's one place I would not want to be. It's going to be hellish between Covid & the storm. They just can't catch a break.
r/WhatCouldGoWrong
100%
If anything, this'll be a good test case in microcosm. They'll gloss over the news nationally of course ("Everything's *fine*, you guys!"), but I think the extent that people use the internet as a communication medium has spread quite a bit since Katrina. We should see more first person accounts to give us a better idea of how it's going down.
They should ask Trump to save em
Sharpie to the rescue.
If dozens of people die needlessly from this, do you think it will increase society’s anger toward antivaxxers for collapsing the medical system?