COVID-19 Louisiana: 2 People Per Ventilator

Louisiana still needs ventilators, and even though the federal government is sending us 150 of them, it is still not enough. To be honest, I am outraged. I really want to go on a cursing spree and tell you all how I really feel, but I’ll keep it polite and professional. Anger isn’t going to help. However, while our president rants on Twitter about buying cars, people in Louisiana are dying, which is just frustrating.

And the tweets about the cars are basically lies. The Trump administration’s EPA made vehicles less safe, less environmentally friendly, and thus much more harmful — not the other way around.

Here is what’s going on in my neighborhood. Yesterday, one of my neighbors came by and told me — from 6 feet away — that the Walmart by my house is refusing to let its employees wear gloves and masks, due to how they clash with the uniform. She also said that the store will most likely shut down because everyone is pretty much infected and has been for a while. She has been exposed and is coughing like I am.

She also said that paramedics were not taking people to the hospital unless they were in really critical condition. A friend who lives near Central Louisuiana, the same city where we had a pastor open up his doors for church (and got arrested for disobeying the stay-at-home order), said she is working with a local charity to sew masks for healthcare workers. She told me that she’d dropped off a box of 50 to Oschner.

Our other neighbor, who has been near me every single day, is symptom-free. We hope she is immune. She’s still trying to get an appointment with her new doctor just to get tested. It’s tough going. Right now, our need for ventilators is extreme, to the point that our healthcare workers are going to have to retrofit breathing devices to put two patients to one ventilator just to stretch out our supply. “We’re doing everything we can,” our governor, John Bel Edwards, told Face the Nation. “This is the biggest issue. In the near term, however, is ventilator capacity, and it is the one thing that really keeps me up at night.”

Our state needs 12,000 ventilators, according to The Advocate. Trump is sending us 150. We also need beds. In New Orleans, Governor Edwards, explained on Twitter that they are making a temporary medical facility out of the New Orleans Convention Center.

Elon Musk promised me in a tweet (to my now-disabled Twitter account) that he would try his best to help us. I have been tweeting about the needs, and so has Cole Davis — we don’t want to be forgotten. Yes, I have faith in Elon Musk, but he is only one person, and the pleas for help are probably piling up in his inbox. Everywhere he looks, there is probably someone begging for help. Someone like me, like Cole.

They just announced today that New Orleans will be running out of ventilators by the weekend. That is three days from now. Three days. Look, people are hurting and some are dying. It may seem as if I am being overdramatic, but I live here. My hometown of Shreveport is taking punches also. In fact, Caddo Parish has more cases than East Baton Rouge, where I live.

I took an Uber to get tested on Monday. My driver told me that his best friend’s father died from the coronavirus the previous night. He, like I, was wearing a mask. He is terrified, but he has no choice other than to drive for Uber because he needs the money. He lives with his parents and he told me he doesn’t want them to get infected — yet he still took me home.

Today on Facebook I saw posts from friends whose relatives have been admitted into intensive care buildup markets. And our state is running out of ventilators. I can’t stress enough that we need help. We are dying. Here are the current stats from our state’s Department of Health:

As of right now, there are 1,355 positive cases and 438 of those are on ventilators across the state. 239 have died. Those may seem like small numbers compared to the flu, or even New York’s cases, but when you factor in the number of ventilators we have and the lack of medical protective gear, you have a crisis. Add into that just how fast this virus spreads and you can do the math. This is why I am being annoying, and I am not giving up on trying to help more people here survive this.