When it comes to life threatening crises the American emergency response system is fast and effective. An ambulance or fire rescue unit arrives on scene in 3 minutes following dispatch. A Code 3 (fastest) delivery of a critical patient to the emergency department also triggers a rapid response.
There are seamless protocols and sophistication to make this possible. The focus is on life-saving.
Knowing what our culture and community are capable of, it is depressing that layers of bureaucracy, incompetency, and excuses get in the way of getting addicts from death’s door into rehabs. These are our family-members and friends addicted and dying while our reaction is ho-hum.
For the common flu we closed schools, medical offices, shuttered “nonessential” businesses, postponed surgeries, forced the wearing of useless masks, sent government workers home with pay, and crushed the economy. We initiated a mindless lock-down.
Meanwhile, the leadership of Yuba-Sutter Counties has been both careless and uncaring in its approach to the deadliest pandemic locally -- the scourge of opiates, methamphetamines and alcohol destroying both addicts and those that love them. Our mindset has been just another day at the office, “How about those Giants!”
After decades of using a Neanderthal model to get drug rehab money out of the government’s trough for rescuing addicts it is time for a financial and procedural audit of Sutter-Yuba Behavioral Health’s drug/alcohol work. The procedures to release rehab dollars to recovery programs are backward and horribly inefficient. The money and the system benefit government corpulence and its workers rather than the dying.
On Sunday, a gaunt barefoot addict was standing outdoors hunched over, pants around his thighs, trying to hit a forearm vein for over 30 minutes. He is better-off overdosing or assaulting someone to get attention in Yuba-Sutter.
If he decides to go for treatment he will need to endure multiple interviews and probably weeks to get into a program. This is barbaric and unnecessary.
How will this addict (maybe already sick) fare on a Zoom interview with a “protected” government counselor? Hahaha. The mentally deficient are in charge of the government. Most addicts will never survive this gauntlet. It is easier to return to the streets for a buzz.
One comedian quipped that of course your $5 contribution to the homeless is going for Crack. Most Crack addicts don’t have a 401K. When you are high you forget that you are homeless, hungry and about your worldly cares.
If we get a miracle and can arrest and sober-up our addict he currently will get no drug-treatment from either of our local jails. Why? Our leaders choose not to offer it.
While we are tripping over the local Covid stats the numbers for overdose deaths and suicide are under lockdown.
Young adults are nearly immune from Covid, but they aren’t immune to an overdose. By late August 2020, 621 San Franciscans had died from overdoses while Narcan was used nearly 3,000 times to spare others. The use of Narcan is voluntarily reported so the use-number is a major undercount.
Matthew Davidson was beating his heroin addiction. The 31-year-old attended weekly recovery meetings. He had a restaurant job he liked and loved his newborn nephew.
Then the coronavirus lockdowns started. Davidson lost his job. He started sitting alone in his apartment near Georgetown, Kentucky - depressed and yearning for his recovery support group that closed. On May 25, 2020, his girlfriend found him dead of an overdose.
Government blame - shifters accuse the pandemic, but the annual flu never caused the nearly doubling of deaths by drugs and suicide. The government’s agenda killed tens of thousands by shutting down churches, support groups, jobs, family interaction, government intervention and access to rehabs. Shame on them!
If enough die maybe a personal friend of a government official will perish and awaken the bureaucrat from his slumber.
(Get more of Lou’s articles and podcasts at nohostagesradio.com)
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