Mystery in overflowing emergency departments

There were a lot of blank looks on Monday, when I asked Director-General John Wakefield a couple of questions about Queensland’s overflowing Emergency departments.

What I wanted to know was:

“IS THERE ANY CONNECTION BETWEEN THE HUGE NUMBERS PRESENTING AT OUR EMERGENCY DEPARTMENTS AND PEOPLE EXPERIENCING ADVERSE REACTIONS TO THE VACCINE”?

Even from my office in Sarina, I could feel the disapproval emanating down the telephone line at me in response. I thought it was a reasonable enough question, particularly as the DG had just given an Opening Statement giving figures that had showed a big jump in the number of people presenting at Queensland’s Emergency Departments and requiring critical care.

According to Dr Wakefield, there was a 15.4% increase in Public Emergency presentations in 2021– despite a population growth of less than 2% – and an “11.2% increase in patients requiring resuscitation or critical care – so the more severe end of Emergency Care”.

Clearly therefore, SOMETHING must be going on out in the community to cause such huge numbers of people to turn up at Emergency.

And yet no-one in the government or our public health office seems the least bit curious about finding out ‘why’.

Aside from referring me on to the TGA website, all the DG or Deputy DG would say, was that any impact on the public hospital system was “negligible”.

This seemed their main concern – making sure I got the message that the increase in numbers had ABSOLUTELY NOTHING WHATSOEVER to do with the reports I was hearing about people presenting complaining of adverse reactions to the vaccine – END OF STORY.

I also noticed that neither of them offered up any information, data, statistics or evidence to substantiate their denials.

Seems it must be all just some huge coincidence or imponderable mystery.

We heard the same from Premier McGowan in WA when he confessed to being mystified as to why WA’s Hospitals were overflowing:

“THIS IS SOMETHING COMPLETELY ANOMALOUS. SOMETHING WE’VE NEVER SEEN BEFORE”.

“WHY IT IS, IS HARD TO KNOW, EXCEPT TO SAY THERE MAY BE SOME EVIDENCE OF SOME KIND OF DELAYED REACTION TO COVID …”

Really?

“IT IS HARD TO KNOW …”??

Surely hospitals keep detailed records on all their patients: including what symptoms they have, what tests are run, what doctors are diagnosing them with, what age group they are.

All of which would tell you pretty quickly, I imagine, what the problem might be.

Or do they already know …

I’ll let you decide.