We were driving back into northwest Aberdeen Sunday from our family walk out at Mina Lake when my wife noticed the empty parking lot at the Ramkota: “Maybe that’s where we could put the coronavirus patients… and over there at the closed Super 8?”
“Good idea,” I said (and really, the only bad ideas I can think of that my wife has had involve artichokes). “And how about the empty Shopko?”
Let’s solve a problem here.
As I noted last night, South Dakota faces 32,000 cases of covid-19 that will require hospitalization. That’s 7.5 times the 4,800 hospital beds in the state. To avoid a catastrophic swamping of our hospitals, we need to flatten the curve by staying home for two years… and we need to find more hospital beds.
Before we start eminent domaining anybody or even paying rent to Aberdeen’s motel-industrial complex, we taxpayers already own 853 unused beds easily convertible to emergency medical housing. That’s the dorm space on the Northern State University campus. With all of our universities canceling on-campus activities and moving all courses online for the rest of this spring semester, the Regents have just over 10,000 beds in six cities available for the state’s use at a moment’s notice. Get on the private colleges, and you can scrounge up room for another 300 patients at Presentation, 530 at Dakota Wesleyan, 360 at Mount Marty, 620 at U. of Sioux Falls, and 1,360 at Augustana.
Dedicate housing at our six public universities and four major East River private colleges to coronavirus response, and we can nearly quadruple our patient bed capacity to nearly 18,000…. more than enough, one would hope, to take care of a somewhat flattened infection curve… assuming we can find hundreds of extra doctors and nurses and swiftly trained medics to staff and clean those facilities and check vitals and ventilators.
Just those ten campuses provide fair geographical distribution of emergency patient beds. The tribes have a number of tribal colleges that might be able to provide space for patients on the reservations, but I don’t want to speak for tribal governments and their facilities.
But our university campuses still miss some population centers, like Watertown, Pierre, and South Dakota’s covid-19 hotspot, Huron. Those towns and others facing the prospect of more covid-19 cases than hospital beds may want to jump at the Ramkota/Super 8 solution. Watertown probably has 700 motel rooms sitting idle for the immediate future; Huron and Pierre also offer hundreds of rooms for medical conversion.
Arlington, Chamberlain, Salem, Canistota, Gettysburg, and Wagner could also foreclose on tax-delinquent AG Dakota and turn a few small motels into temporary medical housing.
Mayors TenHaken, Allender, Schaunaman, Corbett, and the rest of you, listen to my wife: talk to your local public health experts about how many emergency hospital beds they think your towns will need, then get on the horn to your local college administrators and motel owners and talk about making space available for pandemic response.
And if you don’t have a big college or motel handy, start looking around for other empty buildings (like that Shopko!) that could be repurposed to provide emergency medical care.
I’ve heard that several smallish towns are planning to use empty buildings if necessary. Those would be mostly stores. Teachers are still using schools to prepare for their videos for classes.
Why do you choose to speak for public universities and private universities but are too scared to propose the same reasonable, solid, and fair health care standards for the tribal colleges, Mr. H? Scared, don’t think they deserve the same treatment, or just feel like you don’t want to be accused of meddling in the affairs of others? Why are they others, and Augie is not?
grudznick says we are all equal, and this heinous virus does not discriminate, so why do you?
Monument Health caregiver, positive from Meade County. 30 for sure in the state with one dead. Probably will have to use the Fleet Farm building. The numbers predicted look to be on schedule.
When the president is worse than the virus. Should be clear by now that trump and his republicans are unfit for duty and should just stand down and get the hell out of the way. They are not to be trusted to keep us safe.
“The US has been appealing to its allies for help in obtaining medical supplies to overcome critical shortages in its fight against coronavirus.
In his public rhetoric Donald Trump has been talking up the domestic private sector response to the crisis.
“We should never be reliant on a foreign country for the means of our own survival,” Trump said at a White House briefing on Tuesday evening. “America will never be a supplicant nation.”
However behind the scenes, the administration has approached European and Asian partners to secure supplies of testing kits and other medical equipment that are in desperately short supply in the US.” https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/mar/25/trump-privately-appeals-to-asia-and-europe-for-medical-help-to-fight-coronavirus
At the same time, Orange Lunatic has offered stuff to North Korea and Iran. So incredibly insane.
Ms. Geelsdottir, for an out-of-state name-caller, you do recognize some who are insaner than most better than some.
Yankton has a nearly empty mall. Smells a little funky from the flood last year, but, since covid sufferers lose their sense of smell, that shouldn’t be a issue.
Madison has the now closed Community Center and downtown Armory, and the playhouse has a large room for dances and conventions. There’s also the DSU Fieldhouse. We still have the empty ShopKo along with several empty downtown storefronts. As for hotels, we only have three, AmericInn, Super 8, and the recently opened Best Western Lakeview.
As for my old hometown of Winner, they have about five hotels in total. Their former ShopKo is massive compared to Madison, and there’s tons of free space on Main Street. There’s also the school gyms and empty classrooms in the former Middle School, now Winner City Hall.
I’m sure there are many places that could be found to house patients.
The problem is hospital equipment, supplies and oh yea doctors and nurses.
Malls and armories are not wired up electrically for GFCI circuits or to handle electric beds and monitoring equipment. Then there is the necessity for oxygen, sinks and toilets and communications.
All great ideas, but are there doctors and nurses enough to staff these places?
China could come and build a complete 1,000 bed critical need hospital in a week. That includes all the concrete, the electrical, plumbing, equipment and the works, including the staff.
Staff could come immediately from the med school students we have. New York is taking their grad students and putting them to work where they are needed. Do we have any plans for that here in The Sunshine State?
You’re right, Scott: extra space won’t save lives if we don’t also have staff to help. Can we get the military to deploy its combat medics? Would they be of any help?
Klueless Kristi ought to do this:
“We assembled our planning team yesterday and today we brought in a very important group of experts from the statewide healthcare coordination group,” said Joe Kelly. “They bring a tremendous amount of knowledge, experience, existing plans and other resources to our work to identity alternate care sites which will supplement our hospitals, and most importantly our capacity to care for the most critically ill.
“Our goal is to ID sites around the state, obtain the equipment and supplies to operate them and then bring in the healthcare professionals that can take care of the patients.”
That’s what is happening in Minnesota.
Interesting quote, Debbo!
Why isn’t South Dakota doing that and doing exactly what I recommend above? If South Dakota is doing that, why aren’t our leaders telling us that? Giving that information assures the public that, yup, we’re on it.
Maybe Kristi is just waiting for Broadhead to revamp the Meth campaign to do PR to make us think we’re on top of the pandemic problem. Boy, $1.4 million would have gone a fair way toward buying medical equipment and stocking some auxiliary medical treatment sites.
Cory, the gov will probably solicit a poll to see if there is a “perception” of adequate state pandemic management.