Harlem, getting back to normal

My son just got back to his hotel after working the night shift in New York City. He said that the hospital where he is working is getting back to normal. They are no longer seeing any COVID patients. Last night was a parade of homeless people with vague complaints looking for a place to sleep, one shooting, a stabbing, and a bunch of drug and alcohol complaints. The hospital is not a cardiac or a stroke center, so they don't see much in the way of serious calls.

They are closing the subways every night between 1 and 5 am. The police go through and kick all of the homeless out of the subway at that time. The homeless shelters have a curfew: if a homeless person isn't there by midnight, they cannot get in until 6 am the next morning. That means that the EDs at all of the hospitals are filled with homeless who were drunk or high, missed curfew, and were also unable to sleep it off in the subway. They come to the ED with vague complaints, and the staff lets them sleep in the lobby.

The hospitals are beginning to send medical surge workers home and return to normal staffing. Here in Florida, that means that there are 4 patients maximum per nurse in the emergency room. In NYC, that number is much higher: 16 patients per nurse. Providers (Doctors, PAs, and NPs) are similarly stretched thin. As the surge workers leave, workloads are increasing. So, my son tells me that even if he could extend, paying him as much as they are still isn't worth it for the increasing workload.

Medical drugs are always on short supply: even without the COVID crisis, hospitals are chronically out of everything.

On top of that, he says that the entire place smells like pot and urine, and the New Yorkers are using drugs that are almost unheard of in other places. He has seen people OD on things like PCP, which is not even a thing down here in Florida.

He also said that living in New York is a great reminder of why he can't ever vote Democrat. The entire city, according to him, is dysfunctional. Everything is broken and costs four times what it should. He complains that all levels of government pour billions into the city of New York, and all the residents manage to do with it is hand out special favors in graft and corruption, blow it on drugs and alcohol, and then live in a dirty city filled with losers who can't hold a job because they are high and drunk most of the time. They didn't even realize that failing to clean the subways in the middle of a pandemic and allowing unwashed, homeless drug abusers with mental problems live in the same dirty subway cars that are the primary transportation for 6 million people a day could possibly lead to widespread illness. 

So, he will be home at the conclusion of this contract, early June. He is looking forward to that, and tells me that he can't wait for the next New Yorker in Florida who tries to tell him how great it was back home in New York.