Divemedic

News from the ED

During the past week or two, I had a few notable incidents:

Of the more than 100 nurses who work in my hospital’s Emergency Department, only 9 of them are board certified in Emergency Medicine. Only three of us are board certified in a second specialty. For that reason, I now spend most of my days in the critical care zone.

For starters, this being the tail end of summer/start of fall, there are almost zero cases of Flu/COVID/RSV coming into the ED, but there are quite a few cases of pneumonia and sepsis, mostly in our older population. Of our patients, I would say that the biggest reasons for visits are people who are sick because they are old, abusing intoxicants, homeless, having a mental health crisis, or a combination of those.

One of my patients had come in having some mild stroke symptoms. He had my undivided attention for the first 30 minutes he was there. It turned out, no stroke. It was a complicated migraine. So while we were waiting for further testing and for the migraine cocktail to kick in, we suddenly were inundated with some very sick patients. Four cardiac arrests, and 3 other patients who required intubation in less than a two hour timespan. It happens like that sometimes- things are calm, then it is like a bus full of sick people pulls up. As the only nurse in the critical care zone who is certified to insert IV lines by ultrasound that day, I was busy for that two hours. One case in particular, I had to start an ultrasound line, then stick around to give Etomidate and Succinylcholine for the rapid sequence intubation. After that, I was in a cardiac arrest for another 30 minutes.

In the middle of all of this, the patient with the migraine had pushed his nurse call button. When I was finally able to get to him, he was indignant: “I pushed this button 20 minutes ago. This is ridiculous.”

Me: “I’m sorry for the delay, sir. I was busy with some very sick people. I’m sure that you understand, it’s just how things work in the Emergency room sometimes.”

Him: “Where were you? Are you really that incompetent?”

Me: “Sir, I am sure you heard the announcements. I was literally doing CPR on someone for the past half an hour.”

Him: “I don’t care about that, I called for you and you should come. I am never coming to this shitty hospital again. I want to see your boss, you should be fired.”

My charge nurse enters the room, and the man goes on a rant. The charge tells him what happened, and he still keeps complaining.

All of that. Do you know what he wanted? Some water and a warm blanket.

Working in emergency medicine has convinced me that far too many people have Main character syndrome.

Later, I had another 34 year old patient come in complaining of a severe headache and nausea. He reeked of weed. When I asked him about that, he said “Oh, I have a weed card. It’s medicinal.” He then told me that he smokes 6 or 7 joints a day. We tested him fully, finding nothing. Did I mention that he was covered in tattoos, had green hair, a septum ring, and two lip piercings? He was telling me how he is too poor to afford a ride home, and wanted the hospital to make arrangements to get him home. Uh, you can afford all of that ink, those piercings, and weed, but you can’t afford an Uber? Medical marijuana is bullshit 99% of the time, by the way. It isn’t for medical reasons, they just want to get high. If it were medicinal, wouldn’t there be a prescribed dose and schedule, like with every other medication? What other medication says “take however much you want, as often as you want?”

Anyhow, I now have a few days off.

By Divemedic, ago

GIGO

Every so often, a set of statistics comes up where I can show evidence that it is likely false. Like this one:

Look at Florida. This claims that there are under 29% of households with a firearm in it. Let’s take a look at the actual numbers.

There are approximately 14.6 million adults over the age of 21 in Florida. About 2 million of them are ineligible for a concealed weapons permit because of criminal history, immigration status, domestic violence orders, etc.. There are 3 million people licensed to carry firearms in the state (including cops, retired cops, judges, and others), even though they aren’t required for concealed carry. This likely means CCW holders are underrepresented, but it’s the best proxy we have. Still, this means that roughly 24 percent of Florida’s eligible adult population has a CCW permit. Now assume that not all legal gun owners have a CCW permit, and not all people who are ineligible for a permit or gun ownership are without a firearm. (In other words, have a gun despite the fact that it is illegal for them to do so.)

This makes me believe that this number is not accurate. What likely happened was that a survey taker called random people and asked them “Do you have a gun in your house?” and the person said, “Nope, lost them all in a tragic boating accident during the last hurricane, when the gators ate them.”

Now extrapolate that to the three states where less than 10% of the households own guns: Hawaii, Massachusetts, and New Jersey. Do you think the numbers there are likely higher?

In researching this post, I also came across this interesting fact: There were 15 million hunting licenses issued in the entire US in 2018. At the same time, more than 21 million people have concealed weapons permits, even though the number of people with permits is dropping as more states become Constitutional Carry states. This indicates to me that gun culture 2.0, the move from guns being about hunting to guns being about defense, has taken over the entire gun culture.

By Divemedic, ago

Discussions With Communists

Some commie online was upset that lenders charge interest, claiming that it is usury. He feels that loans should be interest free. Being that I have completed the finance and economics courses for my MBA, this is where I decided to help educate him. I shouldn’t have bothered.

Lenders have expenses.

They have fixed administrative costs like accounting, clerks, and other things that they must pay for. Those costs are the same for every loan.

Then there are the variable costs, the cost of defaults. About 1 percent of those who have a 750 or higher credit score default, but this rises to more than 15% of those with a score of less than 600. This default rate means that interest rates must be higher for those who have a higher chance of default. If interest rates are capped, then lenders will simply refuse to lend to those whose likelihood of default makes it uneconomically feasible. That tends to mean minorities, who historically have much higher default rates.

The commie went on to handwave that point away, saying it is a bad approach to paying for things.

In response to this, I posed a question:

So what’s the alternative? It takes about 14,000 hours of labor to build a house, plus materials. Where does the money come from?

Here are the alternatives that he proposed. I answer each in turn.

1) We could eliminate the usury/interest rates system altogether. If it’s too expensive, we have no business buying it yet. If a low cost bought huge portions of America, we can restore that same value.

Much of that was when each person was building their own house, growing their own food, etc. Have you built your own car? House? Can you? Most people cannot. Money is what makes specialization possible. Sometimes, a transaction takes more money than you have on hand. The cost of waiting to save and pay cash isn’t practical. Try living in a carboard box while you save to buy a house.

2) We could have a fixed flat member fee. Nothing too small, nothing too big. Something that keeps a company in business, especially when factoring in multiple customers. We could cap the compounded debt.

How large would the membership fee go to buy a house or a car? What would be the terms? Imagine walking to work for 5 years while you make payments on a car that you don’t yet have.

3) We could simply cap the profit of compounded debt.

What would happen then would be that no one with bad credit would get a loan.

4) We can focus on reducing the root costs of resources (wood, etc.) after eliminating interest rates.

The largest expense in almost any business is the cost of labor. To build that house, you still need to fund those thousands of hours of labor. Who pays for that, and how?

5) The sellers could get monthly payments directly while cutting out the middleman. Extra cost could be minimal.

So you want the sellers to also be the lenders. That’s inefficient and actually increases costs. Now the seller’s funds are tied up in the products that haven’t yet been paid for. The time between selling the inventory and receiving payment is called the cash conversion cycle. Without financing, this could mean years of a company waiting to be paid for things like appliances, homes, and cars. There will still be defaults, meaning that those costs will be passed on to consumers. Also, only wealthy people and those with good credit will receive goods. Minorities need not even apply.

6) Sellers can start by asking for a lump sum in the beginning to give them a buffer before monthly payments.

Again, with sellers asked to also be lenders. This disrupts the seller’s cash conversion cycle. Funds that are tied up in inventory that has already been sold are not available for the company to continue operations, causing losses and delays. This is expensive. The term here is called “The Time Value of Money.”

7) The seller of resource materials can drop their prices for the seller of products.

So now you want the suppliers to bear the costs? The electrician drops prices for the home builder. Now how does that work?

8) Financial aid (if spending isn’t going to the people, why is it so much better for government money to go to the usury sin of lenders?) To eventually pay off the government in a fixed fee of profit. No fee. Failure to cover is taxed — last resort.

So the government will pay interest instead of consumers? This results in unsustainable debt, or in runaway inflation.

9) A non-profit source of assistance to fill in a time of struggle.

Where does this non-profit get their funding? Money is a material, just like steel, wood, or labor. It has to be paid for. Someone, somehow, someway will bear the costs of money. It will be the consumer who has to wait until he can get a house or car on layaway, the business that has paid for labor and materials and now can’t use those funds for the next project because they are awaiting payment, or the taxpayers who have to fund the government. It’s a cost, and someone will pay for it. You are expecting the government, who has famously paid $600 for a hammer, to control costs.

10) Pay as we go. A product might need to be covered completely, but duration of services could be ongoing payment. Instead of a government paying a lump sum of a project, they only shell out service cost totals as the project goes on, that way if there’s a cancelation, it basically freezes the pay where it is at, instead of being trapped a lump sum covered by loans and then owing the initial cost and a potentially unending debt with immeasurable interest rates, the costs of services are already covered.

So you pay for the land to be cleared. Then save for a few months before you have the money to pay for the underslab work like plumbing to be done. Three more months for the outside walls, ad nauseum, ad infinitum. Twenty years of being homeless later, you finally are ready to move into your house. This is just a repeat of your first point- and still won’t work.

11) Lay Away. Pay First. Receive after. No middleman.

Again with the point of paying for it before you get it.

12) A combination of these things..

None of which will work, for the reasons above.

His answer to all of this? He focused on the “Time Value of Money” and the cost of money.

“That’s the cost of money” ignores everything I just said. I know that my wages don’t satisfy my time. Time is not an objective value. Too bad. Your explanation is some weak sauce.

The base issue here is that young people (who make up the majority of useful idiots) have no concept of money, value, or economics. My son once asked me (when he was 4 years old) for some expensive toy. I told him that we don’t have money for that, and his reply was to tell me to go get more from the ATM. Communists display all of the economic knowledge of a 4 year old who wants a new toy.

By Divemedic, ago

Fascism?

The left loves to call us fascists and Trump a dictator, yet I keep seeing more and more evidence that the left was engaged in the systematic destruction of the Constitutional protections that we are supposed to have here in the USA. For example:

Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley has been conducting a Congressional investigation, and has uncovered FBI documents showing that President Biden’s administration was engaged in intelligence gathering operations through the use of illegal interception of the electronic communications of at least eight different opposition leaders. That’s right- the FBI was spying on Republicans.

The FBI targeted the following Members of Congress:

  • Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.)
  • Sen. Bill Hagerty (R-Tenn.)
  • Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.)
  • Sen. Dan Sullivan (R-Alaska)
  • Sen. Tommy Tuberville (R-Ala.)
  • Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.)
  • Sen. Cynthia Lummis (R-Wyo.)
  • Sen. Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.)
  • Rep. Mike Kelly (R-Pa.)

Tell me again how Trump is the one acting like a dictator. Keep in mind that Nixon was about to be impeached, and resigned from office, for doing far less than this.

By Divemedic, ago

Regime Change

President Donald Trump has activated hundreds of Texas National Guard troops and federalized 300 Illinois National Guard troops for duty in Illinois despite the governor’s objections. The left is bitching because they have suddenly rediscovered states’ rights.

Once again, they are deploying our troops into a combat zone with no strategy, no clear definition of what a victory would look like, and worse yet no exit plan. All to yet again just to prop up another failed regime that will never become a true democracy…………

By Divemedic, ago

This Would Have Been a Comment

Miguel, formerly of Gun Free Zone, has posted a video over at his Substack. I recommend that you view it. I would have posted a comment, but posting comments over there is far too tedious. Here is what I wanted to say:

At that point, the dog is being used as a weapon in order to further what is now an armed robbery and aggravated battery. She clearly shows intent with the statements “Get him!” and “I will fucking kill you.”
Her, the dog, and her accomplice are all fair game for some freedom seeds.

By Divemedic, ago

Increase Equity Through Mediocrity

The proposal to eliminate anything that makes whites look good, or blacks look bad, is being carried forward by that communist Mamdani. His proposal is to eliminate gifted programs in the NYC school system due to the higher number of white and Asian students that gain entry through the exam. It’s racist to recognize that blacks are not as smart as whites, on average. This will increase equity through mediocrity. It doesn’t lift up the underachievers, it handicaps the talented.

I would suggest that this reminds me of a short story called “Harrison Bergeron” written by Kurt Vonnegut. This is how communism works- it cannot make those who have little talent or ambition into successes, so communism tears down the talented and successful to make everyone’s outcome the same.

That’s the essence of equity.

By Divemedic, ago

Getting Hotter

From a comment on yesterday’s post:

I just heard the audio from Chicago PD ordering officers to stand down and not assist the federal agents. Sure seems like Civil War 2 is kicking off, doesn’t it?

It sure looks like it. One thing seems certain, in the last few months, the left appears to have ramped up both violent rhetoric and actual violence.

In June, DHS noted that there were increasing examples of agents and their families being doxxed and threatened online.

In July, there were dozens of arrests made of individuals who either threatened or attempted to carry out violent acts against Federal Law Enforcement. Armed attacks in Alvaredo and McAllister Texas. The attack in Alvaredo was evidence of coordinated leftist attacks. Several people wearing black clothing where attackers drew ICE officers out of the facility by first setting off fireworks and spray painting “traitor” and “ICE pig” on cars and a guard post at the facility.

As officials engaged the group, someone standing in the nearby woods flashed a signal with a flashlight before shots were fired from the same direction.

A second assailant across the street mag dumped at the cops. An AR-style rifle and a flag emblazoned with the words, “resist fascism, fight oligarchy”, as well as flyers reading “Fight ICE terror with class war”, were found at the scene.

In August, a 36-year-old identified as Bratton Dean Wilkinson claimed he had a bomb detonator in his backpack at the Dallas ICE facility.

September saw the Charlie Kirk assassination, as well as shootings at the ICE office in Dallas. An ICE agent shot and killed an illegal immigrant who was trying to run him over.

This weekend, ICE agents were ambushed by at least 10 cars full of people, with at least one of them armed. An armed woman was shot.

The left is ramping up the violence in a way that displays coordination and control, as well as better tactics and logistics. They are getting all of their shit into one sock. It’s only a matter of time before the events begun by them begin drawing return fire.

Spicy times are a’comin.

By Divemedic, ago