An alternative to another pending Oregon shutdown


By Taxpayers Association of Oregon

OregonWatchdog.com

With a 94% rise in cases in Oregon, Governor Brown enacted adding additional restrictions last Friday.  It is unknown what the restrictions will be or how far this will go including more shutdowns.  Some in the state are pushing counties to create their own restrictions..

It must be noted that the case rising is due in part to vaccinated people getting the virus which is predictable because the vaccine does not prevent infection but rather helps by greatly reducing the harmful effects of the virus.

About 340 of the current cases required hospitalization.  The benchmark of 300 hospitalizations has been previously cited as point to when new restrictions should be considered.  Unlike 2020, most of these patients are vaccinated and their symptoms will be less and their chances of survival greatly improved.  So 2021 hospitalizations are greatly different than 2020 hospitalizations for the same infection.

With 300+ being the number that indicates that our hospitals are filling up, we should not be so vulnerable ever again.  We need to address the capacity issue.

The billion in extra Covid relief funds should be used to increase hospital capacity for this emergency and for future pandemics.  I hope this has happened already but have yet to see an example.

If you increase capacity then hospitals will not be overwhelmed when cases do increase.

Furthermore, only 30% of the near 300 Covid hospitalizations are intensive care cases.   Should 100 cases set the ramifications for four million Oregonians?   If we had additional capacity this would not have to be the case.  Because a key component of intensive care is increased monitoring, many existing hospital spaces could be upgraded to intensive care.   With a billion dollars in surplus Covid relief funds, we could make this happen.

We should be using Covid relief funds for Covid and not spending millions on art galleries and community festivals.

This idea represents our honest efforts at coming up with solutions and suggestions without goign back to closing things down again.

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