[roscoguy]

Originally Posted by holger danske

No. It's a shoddy journalism issue. NPR is a news source relied on by many people. Yet they chose to run an article without adequate investigation to drive a certain agenda. Where in the article does it say the family contacted 43 hospitals but were turned away because of lack of space. The only hospital contacted said he needed specialized care not available there. I'm just calling BS on NPR. Don't turn it into a vax issue.

Originally Posted by holger danske

As the OP I take exception to your twice posted accusation that I did not read the NPR
article. Not only did I read it but I read the WP article on which it was based and Ray's obit as well as other articles on Cullman and Rush Hospital.
From the WP article I learned that Ray's daughter who was quoted was Jeopardy fan hence the not so clever reference in my post's title to Jeopardy.

I also notice some discrepancies between the two, for example- NPR article "DeMonia's daughter, Raven DeMonia, told The Washington Post that it was "shocking" when the hospital told the family there were no ICU beds anywhere near Cullman, a town of about 16,000 some 50 miles north of Birmingham.” and the WP article “Raven DeMonia, his daughter, told The Washington Post on Sunday that it was “shocking” when the family was told that dozens of ICUs were unable to treat her father.
Now you may feel that is a distinction without a difference but I do not. I believe it was changed to subtly influence readers to buy the premise of their story.

Nowhere in either article does it say Cullman had no ICU beds available or that Ray was denied one there. The hospital spokesperson merely confirmed he was a patient there and that “The level of care he required was not available at Cullman Regional.” (Sort of sounds like the Villages Hospital that routinely airlifts patients to Leesburg) I think that neither article mentioning whether Ray was in an ICU bed or a regular bed is telling. If he was denied an ICU bed it would have been included at it would fit the agenda.
WP article mentions a “specialized cardiac ICU bed” was needed. Rush Hospital in Meridien has a a facility called The Specialty Hospital of Meridian … a 49 bed facility providing acute-level care for patients suffering from medically complex illnesses. Sort of fits Ray’s profile considering he had a stroke in 2020 requiring hospitalization in Birmingham some 50 miles from Cullman.
Yes his obit says "Due to covid-19....." but placement of any information in any obit does not rise to the level requiring journalistic standards and an article using such info is merely bootstrapping to support their argument. I notice that neither the hospital nor the other authorities quoted concede that this particular transfer was caused by overcrowding.
So in sum, I did read the articles, I used a not so clever title gleaned from them and I found their headlines and the tenor of the article agenda driven and to constitute shoddy journalism.
Feel free to swallow what you will.

Well, if you read the NPR story, you got something completely different than I did. You are absolutely right, the article didn't say that Cullman had no beds, it said that the needed level of care wasn't available there and that "Due to COVID 19, CRMC emergency staff contacted 43 hospitals in 3 states in search of a Cardiac ICU bed and finally located one in Meridian, MS.", which the NPR article did indeed quote directly from Mr. DeMonia's obituary.
However, I still can't understand what you feel "never happened" or was misrepresented in the NPR story. Do you have reason to believe that there were ICU beds available or, conversely, that the hospitals contacted were not at or near ICU capacity, at least in part due to COVID patients? More quotes from the article, from sources other than an obituary: "ICU capacity in Alabama has been maxed out in recent weeks, and COVID-19 patients occupy about half of the intensive care beds, according to Johns Hopkins University."
And this:
"Speaking last week, Dr. Scott Harris, the head of the Alabama Department of Public Health, said the state was continuing to experience "a real crisis" with ICU bed capacity."
I still see no "shoddy journalism" at all.