Health care update from the inside:

We are all part time employees now.

The side jobs we were given to suppliment hours have been eliminated.

We were the lucky ones at first, because of our "essential" status. That fortune is quickly slipping away.

We are inviting the public to return, in the slowest, most conservative and cowardly fashion possible. The signal from this tip toeing, combined with the media's fear porn, means only a small fraction of patients are coming in.

Thusly, hospitals are hemorrhaging money on an unbelievable scale.

Starting next week, every major hospital in the US will need somewhere around $200 Million just to stay afloat.

That is another multi trillion dollar bailout waiting to happen.

The borrowed pto we were lent will run out within the next two weeks. The hospital will take a loss on that too, as employees leave before repaying.

The masks and social distancing are a joke to most of us. We go along with it because now isnt the time to fight your employer.

The looks of exasperation and concern from behind the masks are for one reason alone.

Side note: almost every hospital employee takes up sewing and or knitting as a hobby. Even the men. The amount of home made cloth masks is astounding. Bags of them lay around unused. They are useless as ppe, but cover the new requirements fashionably.

It is sinking in that for us, the end of this fiasco is nowhere in sight. Us old schoolers know how hospitals function. Labor will take the biggest hit. Many of us will lose our jobs and the market offers no relief, not even for nurses. Entire units will be disolved.

Health care entities move at a glacial pace. Most solutions to daily problems are no longer viable by the time they are implemented.

Because of pressure from the whitehouse, we made massive changes in weeks which would have otherwise taken atleast a decade. No exaggeration.

The issue now is the fallout from those changes, plus the attempt at changing back into a functional system, does not have the same pressure.

Our inability to move with any speed or determination is going to keep us sliding backward for some time.

The changes we made were best for the patients. Drive up care, effectively removing waiting rooms, incentivizing telemedicine etc. However, these were not market driven changes. They were done from central planning.

So now we are bleeding money while waiting for orders from politicians. The same politicians who will be negotiating our bailouts. The same politicians who are deciding when and where we may work again.

FUD. Fear Uncertainty Doubt.

We are in the uncertainty phase. None of us know what will happen next. Keynesian economic disaster looms. War posturing with Iran and China. Kim Jong Uns oddly pivitol health. Civil rights mangled. Protests. Black and gray markets emerging.

And that is all without even mentioning the virus!

Godspeed!