Earlier this week a local CBS news crew visited a North Georgia hospital’s Covid unit for the first time in 2021:
The Northeast Georgia Medical Center is at capacity, the staff is tired, and people are dying.
CBS46 was in the ICU while two COVID-19 patients died within the first 15 minutes of our crews being there.
CBS46 interviewed nurse Amber Rampy who after 20 months has had all she can take.
“I just left on Friday because I can’t do it anymore. I just can’t,” Rampy said.
Like many medical professionals, she thought the worst of the pandemic was behind her.
“Although I’m used to people dying, I’m just not used to this many,” Rampy said.
73 have died at the hospital where she works just this month. That doesn’t include the two who died while CBS46 was there Monday.
248 patients were battling for their lives Monday night in the the ICU we visited and more than 6,000 people were facing the same uphill battle across the state.
“Individuals make poor decisions, you have to take care of them, but it’s overwhelming,” Rampy said.
The Hill has more:
Vice President for Northeast Georgia Health System and incident commander John Delzell told The Hill that the recent spike in Georgia has mostly been among those who are unvaccinated. Delzell also mentioned that they’re seeing a lot more younger patients with COVID-19 this time around.
Delzell believes that this current wave will peak in the next few weeks.
That’s nice.
A week from today just south of here, the Mountain State Fair will open and run for 10 days. There is nothing on its website to indicate any requirement for vaccinations, social distancing or masks. Granted, fair organizers probably assumed in their planning months ago that the pandemic would be long over by now.
But some of the fair exhibits are indoors or inside large tents. In 2019, close to 150 people contracted Legionnaires’ disease (136 confirmed) traced to a hot tub display in one exhibition building. Four people died.
I was one of the unconfirmed cases. Days after shooting the picture below, I was sick for a week with a “fever of unknown origin.” I was on antibiotics for four days before the Legionnaires’ story broke. The hot tub booth was about 20 feet to the left across the aisle from the Democratic Party booth from where I shot the picture.
That was just Legionnella. COVID-19 is not finished with us yet. But it will finish many more people before it’s done.
Guess who won’t be staffing a fair booth this year.