{"id":41892,"date":"2022-02-22T13:11:07","date_gmt":"2022-02-22T04:11:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/world\/commentisfree\/2022\/feb\/22\/two-years-have-passed-since-the-covid-pandemic-began-but-new-zealand-icus-still-arent-ready"},"modified":"2022-02-22T13:11:07","modified_gmt":"2022-02-22T04:11:07","slug":"two-years-have-passed-since-the-covid-pandemic-began-but-new-zealand-icus-still-arent-ready-alex-psirides","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/?p=41892","title":{"rendered":"Two years have passed since the Covid pandemic began but New Zealand ICUs still aren\u2019t ready  | Alex Psirides"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The inconvenient truth of the scarcity of ICU beds has been partially addressed by altering their definition<\/p>\n<p>There is a <a href=\"https:\/\/knowyourmeme.com\/memes\/this-is-fine\">meme from 2016<\/a> of a dog sitting in a room engulfed in fire proclaiming \u201cTHIS IS FINE\u201d. It feels increasingly relevant to healthcare. As the flames of Covid rose around the world, the response from New Zealand <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/world\/2020\/oct\/08\/new-zealands-covid-19-response-the-best-in-the-world-say-global-business-leaders\">continued to invoke international admiration<\/a>. We could smell the smoke, but there was no fire. Within the healthcare sector, business \u2013 mostly \u2013 continued as usual.<\/p>\n<p>We knew it would not always be this way. Overseas we witnessed <a href=\"https:\/\/theguardian.com\/australia-news\/2022\/jan\/13\/covid-patients-occupy-one-in-three-icu-beds-in-major-sydney-hospital-as-nurse-shortages-soar\">patients and colleagues disappearing under successive waves of case numbers<\/a>, hospitalisations, intensive care admissions and deaths. Many of us applauded our national response which stood in stark opposition to strategies chosen elsewhere.<\/p>\n<p> <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/world\/commentisfree\/2022\/feb\/22\/two-years-have-passed-since-the-covid-pandemic-began-but-new-zealand-icus-still-arent-ready\">Continue reading&#8230;<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The inconvenient truth of the scarcity of ICU beds has been partially addressed by altering their definitionThere is a meme from 2016 of a dog sitting in a room engulfed in fire proclaiming \u201cTHIS IS FINE\u201d. It feels increasingly relevant to healthcare. &#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2924,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"sns_share_botton_hide":"","vkExUnit_sns_title":"","_vk_print_noindex":"","sitemap_hide":"","_veu_custom_css":"","veu_display_promotion_alert":"","vkexunit_cta_each_option":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[41,1066,56],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-41892","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-asia-pacific","category-coronavirus","category-new-zealand"],"aioseo_notices":[],"veu_head_title_object":{"title":"","add_site_title":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41892","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2924"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=41892"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41892\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":41893,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41892\/revisions\/41893"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=41892"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=41892"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=41892"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}