“Fifteen Days to Flatten Curve” was about making sure there were enough hospital beds available for people with COVID. In the midst of panicky, early days of the pandemic, Congress passed and President Donald Trump signed the $2.2 trillion-with a-T Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security Act.
One of the many, many very expensive provisions in the law was $100,000,000,000. This is one million dollars, one hundred thousand times. It was “designed to provide an infusion of money to hospitals, and other health care institutions responding to the coronavirus epidemic.”
This is according to Kaiser Family Foundation. It also states that the average hospital bed in the United States costs about $108,000. What have we got for our money, you ask? Would you believe… there would be fewer hospitals beds? You would.
It seems that I wrote this just a few days ago about Anthony Fauci’s NIAID spending $205,000 making monkeys transgender. I suppose it is fair to say that the damage was minimal and only a small number of monkeys were affected.
Kaiser stated at the time that “this $100 Billion fund could provide crucial support.”
If the chart is difficult to read, there are about 50,000 less staffed hospitals in the US right now than there were in 2020.
These numbers are from HealthData.gov, a Department of Health & Human Services website. They were provided by Stinson Norwood on Twitter. Norwood said, “I wish someone would question Psaki about all that CARES money to boost hospital capacity.” But, wait. It gets even stranger from there: I was not one to accept anecdotes as data. I researched hospitals that were closing ICUs and reducing the number of beds.
LJ Baker, Geary Community Hospital’s director of Human Services, announced Monday that the hospital was unable to operate the Intensive Care Unit due to the rising cost and shortage of nurses. Comparing a four-day stretch from December 2020 to the most recent, we found that ICU beds were 18% less staffed in the area of Will and Kankakee in Illinois. This means that almost 30 ICU beds are now staffed than one year ago.
I could go on and on, but the point is clear: We spent 100 million more dollars on medical services that we didn’t receive. Worse, hospitals have had to reduce the number of hospital beds they staff due to staffing shortages. This is largely due to vaccine mandates for frontline medical personnel.
So where did all that money go?
