As they say in New Jersey...
Merry Friggin' Christmas!
No, no, not really. But on a serious note, yes, in the States at least, holidays like St. Patrick's Day have overtaken the Christmas Holidays as the worst time for drunk drivers. However, there is still plenty of Holiday pharmacology out on the roads now and to make matters even more fun, the whole Hospital world in the States seems to be on diversion.
What is diversion and what does it mean to the average Joe? Well, diversion is when they turn the vacancy light off at your local Hospital Motel 6 so to speak on any given unit. As a result, patients are supposedly shunted to other facilities that have room. It's a great management theory... until you realize that nothing happens in a vaccum. The same forces that work on Hospital 1 are working on Hospital 2 as well. The units most effected are...
1) Emergency Rooms and I'm not talking about the whiners and GOMERS who come in with problems they could handle elsewhere. I'm talking they are full up with real emergencies.
2) ICU's. Yes, they can hold you in Emergency and we won't let you die in emergency... if you do I'll dig you up and kill you again! However, the delay will affect your ability to recover from whatever ails you and yes, people die every day because of this delay.
3) Pediatric ICU's, especially those dealing with lung issues.
4) Obstetrical units - when will we finger out that humping is more popular than dying?
5) Units that handle elderly people.
6) Trauma ICU's
So, as long as you are not old, or young, or female, or injured or sick, you are fine...
I laugh with dread when I hear our fearless political leaders pontificate about preparing for "bird flu". Chickens my @ss! We are over-run with the workload we have already. Check out this link...
http://gaems.net/cgi-bin/diversion.pl
it gives the status of the area hospitals and the ones not reporting, are simply so over-run with patients that they can't take time to avoid the $5,000.00 fine they get each and every time they don't update their status.
What I'm trying to say is be careful and stay home and torute your mind with IL-2 rather than risk life and limb out on the road!