The inconvenient truth of the scarcity of ICU beds has been partially addressed by altering their definition
There is a meme from 2016 of a dog sitting in a room engulfed in fire proclaiming “THIS IS FINE”. It feels increasingly relevant to healthcare. As the flames of Covid rose around the world, the response from New Zealand continued to invoke international admiration. We could smell the smoke, but there was no fire. Within the healthcare sector, business – mostly – continued as usual.
We knew it would not always be this way. Overseas we witnessed patients and colleagues disappearing under successive waves of case numbers, hospitalisations, intensive care admissions and deaths. Many of us applauded our national response which stood in stark opposition to strategies chosen elsewhere.
