Government is good at imposing overarching regulations. Making finely tuned (or even roughly tuned) adjustments to fit particular circumstances? Not so much. This is nowhere more apparent than in the government’s decision to shut down “elective” procedures everywhere, even though the need to so so varied in the extreme from place to place. This article provides some details on the fiasco.
a friend who works in a cardiac intensive care unit (ICU) in rural Virginia called recently and told me about how they had reorganized their entire system around caring for coronavirus patients. They had cancelled most “non-essential” procedures, imposed furloughs and pay cuts, and created a special ICU ward for patients with COVID-19. So far, they have had only one patient. One. The nurses assigned to the COVID-19 ward have very little to do. In the entire area covered by this hospital system, only about 30 people have tested positive for COVID-19.
Government official 1: We have a pandemic! We need to impose some regulations.
Government official 2: Great. But let’s treat rural Virginia the same way we treat Manhattan.