Foreshadow Now, ‘Season of the End Times’:

Blog note. Jesus indicated that ‘fearful sights’ (various natural disasters) would occur leading up to the time known as the Tribulation and Great Tribulation (a combined seven year period of great destruction on earth). Although these types of things have occurred in the past for centuries and thousands of years, they could be identified as the ‘season of the times’ due to the ferociousness of these events. They would be occurring in greater intensity, severity, frequency, size, duration, scope … just like the pains that a woman experiences in labor the farther along she is in the labor process. We are in the ‘season of the times’ that comes just before the seven (7) year Tribulation/Great Tribulation period

… And great earthquakes shall be in diverse places, and famines, and pestilences; and fearful sights and great signs shall there be from heaven. (Luke 21:11).
… And there shall be signs in the sun, and in the moon, and in the stars; and upon the earth distress of nations, with perplexity; the sea and the waves roaring; (Luke 21:25)
… Men’s hearts failing them for fear, and for looking after those things which are coming on the earth: for the powers of heaven shall be shaken; (Luke 21:26)
… This know also, that in the last days perilous times shall come. (2 Timothy 3:1)

Jesus is giving a series of prophecies about what to look for as the age of grace comes to a close. These verses are several of many such prophecies from throughout the Bible. 2017 was the worst year in recorded history for the intensity, frequency, severity, duration and occurrence of a large number of severe natural disasters worldwide. Earthquakes, volcanoes, hurricanes, typhoons, cyclones, torrential flooding, unprecedented wildfires in unusual places, devastating droughts, excessive/scorching heat setting records everywhere, record snowfalls in Europe and Russia. Snow in the Arabia. This list can go on. Most studied Eschatologists believe these ‘fearful sights’ and massive natural disasters are all part of the ‘CONVERGENCE’ of signs that this Biblical and prophetic age is closing. Most people who study prophecy are familiar with the routine reference(s) made that these things will be like a woman having labor.

New York City hospitals are 11 days from running out of space as the number of new coronavirus cases explodes

Lydia Ramsey Business Insider. March 27, 2020

New York City’s hospitals are on wartime footing.

They’re converting every available space into room for patients. Medical students are becoming physicians ahead of schedule. 

The foe, a novel coronavirus that originated in China about three months ago, has already overwhelmed several of the city’s medical centers. The city has seen a dramatic rise in coronavirus cases since mid-March and is now the center of the US outbreak.

It’s exhausting doctors and pushing the healthcare system to its limits.

As of Friday morning, the city had reported 25,573 cases and 366 deaths. Gov. Andrew Cuomo said at a press conference Friday that he didn’t expect cases to reach their peak statewide for another 21 days.

Hospitals in the New York City area risk running out of space and equipment to care for the sickest patients as cases surge, according to New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio and Cuomo. The number of deaths, Cuomo said, is going to keep going up. 

“That is the worst news that I can tell the people of the state of New York,” he said Friday. “New York is still the most affected state both in terms of number of cases and in terms of deaths.”

In preparation for the surge in patients, hospitals have been asked by the governor to boost patient space by half. The city is also getting an emergency shipment of 2,000 ventilators.

Adding in that capacity and supplies, however, still puts NYC hospitals just 11 days away from running out of intensive-care-unit beds and 14 days away from running out of ventilators, according to an analysis by the health-technology company Qventus, which was based on public data and modeling from the Imperial College of London.

Doctors are hoping that the outbreak slows sooner.

“If it peaks early next week, we’re OK,” Dr. Mark Jarrett, the chief quality officer at Northwell Health System, which operates 23 hospitals in New York, told Business Insider. “If it’s two weeks from now, we’ll have a problem.”

Business Insider spoke with more than half a dozen hospital administrators and healthcare workers across hospitals in NYC to get a sense of what the front lines of the coronavirus look like in the overwhelmed city. Some spoke on condition of anonymity because they had not been authorized to speak with the press. Their identities are known to Business Insider. 

Hospitals are already filled with coronavirus patients

A nurse who works in the emergency department at the New York University Medical Center in Manhattan told Business Insider that patients were streaming in. On Monday, patients showing signs of the coronavirus were coming in every five to 10 minutes.

By Wednesday, a patient was coming in with symptoms every three to five minutes, she said. Serious cases are hitting everyone, including younger adults. On Tuesday, the nurse said she had to intubate two patients in their 30s. NYU declined to comment.

As more patients get the message to ride out the symptoms of the novel coronavirus at home, those coming into hospitals are sicker, according to Dr. Jolion McGreevy, the medical director of Mount Sinai Hospital’s emergency department.

“We’re now seeing patients coming in in impending respiratory failure,” he said.

The patients have a hard time breathing on their own, and the hospital is more quickly deciding to put them on ventilators to help them breathe. 

Queens appears to be the hardest-hit part of the city. As of Friday morning, the borough accounted for about one-third of the city’s cases.

The city-run Elmhurst Hospital in Queens has been overwhelmed, with staff reporting a doubling in cases coming into the emergency room, a refrigerated truck for bodies of patients who have died, and limited ventilators on hand to care for patients, according to press reports.

Northwell’s Long Island Jewish Forest Hills Hospital in Queens has been “inundated” with cases, Jarrett said. Northwell is moving patients to larger hospitals nearby, he said. 

Another hospital in Queens is running low on ventilators and protective gear, according to a doctor there who spoke on condition of anonymity to avoid professional repercussions. The doctor said he was trying to wait as long as possible before putting patients on ventilators to conserve equipment.

“The threshold to intubate is much higher,” he said.

Over the course of the week, the hospital took in about another 100 coronavirus-positive patients. Soon, he said, patients who are positive for COVID-19 will be in beds throughout the hospital. 

‘I’ve not seen it slowing’

“I’ve not seen it slowing,” he said. 

Starting about two weeks ago, health systems across the city started rushing to add space for the expected surge of coronavirus cases. They canceled noncritical surgeries and are opening up additional intensive-care units, turning to units that were otherwise used for surgery recovery. They’re also bringing in staff who’d otherwise work in other parts of the hospital to help.

On Sunday, Cuomo announced plans to turn the Javits Center in Manhattan into a 1,000-bed hospital for coronavirus patients. The following day, he told hospitals they must increase their bed counts by 50%.

Cuomo said the state needs as many as 140,000 hospital beds, including 30,000 ICU beds and 40,000 ventilators. He’s said it wouldn’t have enough.

Dr. Craig Smith has said that the NewYork-Presbyterian system estimates it’ll need 700 to 934 ICU beds. Even that lower figure exceeds the number that are likely available, Smith, who’s the chairman of the Department of Surgery at NewYork-Presbyterian’s Columbia University Irving Medical Center, wrote in a letter to colleagues.

At Mount Sinai Hospital, more than half the hospital has been designated as space for coronavirus patients, according to a doctor who works in the health system. The hospital is now turning its soaring atrium into space to care for patients.

A Mount Sinai spokesman told Business Insider that the system was preparing for surge capacity, like other New York hospitals.

In Newark, New Jersey, an intensive-care doctor told Business Insider that four floors of Newark Beth Israel Medical Center were already dedicated to coronavirus patients.

In the ICU, he has young patients in their 20s and 30s on ventilators. Some of the patients he was taking care of have died. He said some patients were experiencing kidney or liver failure.

“Newark Beth Israel, an RWJBarnabas Health facility, is taking all necessary precautions and immediate action steps to ensure the safety of our patients and our colleagues,” a spokeswoman for the hospital told Business Insider in a statement.

She added that the organization was following protocols from the New Jersey Department of Health and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. 

“We have created capacity in our facility to treat critically ill COVID-19 patients and our critical care teams receive the personal protective equipment needed to care for these patients. This is a rapidly evolving situation, and to that end, we review supply management and personnel daily,” she said.

Running low on staff and supplies

As cases mount, supplies of protective equipment have gone into short supply, and hospitals are rationing the gear.

The ICU doctor in Newark said his hospital hands out one mask per day as doctors report to work. New stock comes in but doesn’t last long. 

Already, the critical-care team is working on a “skeleton crew,” as staff have fallen ill.

“If we can’t protect ourselves, who’s going to be the one to carry everything on?” he said.

At NYU, the nurse said, protective gear is kept under lock and key.

The nurse at NYU is working with colleagues who have tested positive but haven’t shown symptoms. Because they’re asymptomatic, the health system is allowing them to keep working. For now, the health system’s policy is that workers can come in if they’ve been symptom-free for 72 hours.

“They just won’t have any staff members if we all stay home,” the nurse said.  

On March 20, New York City’s Department of Health issued guidance to stop testing for the coronavirus in nonhospitalized patients and in patients where testing wouldn’t ultimately factor into how they managed symptoms. The goal is to limit how much equipment hospitals are using.

Adding space

In Brooklyn, Maimonides Medical Center is gearing up. The hospital typically has about 720 beds and is stretching that to 1,400, using a tent, a nursing facility, and areas normally used for cancer treatment and surgeries.

“We are anticipating continued surge for the foreseeable future,” Dr. Patrick Borgen, the chair of surgery, said. “We’re having to aim pretty far down the line.”

As the patient count grows, keeping staff on hand to care for those patients will get even more challenging. 

“Staffing is the biggest issue we face right now,” Northwell’s Jarrett said. “If we get more cases, that’ll be even more of a problem.”

Stretching the use of breathing equipment

Maimonides is also taking cues from other providers that have started getting creative with how they’re using equipment, such as setting up one ventilator for two patients.

“We’re having to think outside the box as this thing grows,” Borgen said. The health system is studying the approach but has yet to try it.

Doctors at Columbia are already hooking up two patients to the same ventilator. In an update from Smith, he wrote that as of Wednesday, the organization had converted empty operating rooms into ICU rooms, each holding two to three patients with COVID-19. Some of them are sharing ventilators. 

Northwell’s Jarrett said the organization was working to turn anesthesiology machines that might otherwise be used during surgeries into ventilators. 

Planning for the weeks ahead

For now, Borgen said, the hospital has the space it needs.

What he’s planning for is next week. 

Already, NYC is beyond some of the best-case scenarios Northwell had laid out for the pandemic, Jarrett said. 

With the final days of March ahead, the focus is on expanding capacity within the hospital in regard to space, equipment such as ventilators, and staff.

When that runs out, the city’s hospitals might find themselves in a similar place as Italy, which had to make hard choices about whom to treat with the space and supplies they had.

The height of the pandemic is still to come.

If the patient count keeps rising for weeks, Jarrett said, “We along with everybody else in the New York City metro area will be running into issues we don’t want to run into.”

(Night Watchman Note: What will happen when millions of Christians suddenly ‘disappear’ in the ‘twinkling of an eye”??? Those who may be first-responders, doctors, nurses, support staff, policemen, firefighters, homeless volunteers, those in the red cross or other emergency aid and relief organizations, in the national guard or military, pharmacies, grocery stores, etc. You get the picture.)

Jesus Christ’s Offer of Salvation:

The ABCs of Salvation through Jesus Christ (the Lamb)

A. Admit/Acknowledge/Accept that you are sinner. Ask God’s forgiveness and repent of your sins.

. . . “For all have sinned, and come short of the glory of God.” (Romans 3:23).

. . . “As it is written, There is none righteous, no, not one.” (Romans 3:10).

. . . “If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us.” (1 John 1:8).

B. Believe Jesus is Lord. Believe that Jesus Christ is who He claimed to be; that He was both fully God and fully man and that we are saved through His death, burial, and resurrection. Put your trust in Him as your only hope of salvation. Become a son or daughter of God by receiving Christ.

. . . “That whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have eternal life. For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life. For God sent not his son into the world to condemn the world; but that the world through him might be saved. (John 3:15-17). For whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved.” (Romans 10:13).

C. Call upon His name, Confess with your heart and with your lips that Jesus is your Lord and Savior.

. . . “That if thou shalt confess with thy mouth the Lord Jesus, and shalt believe in thine heart that God hath raised him from the dead, thou shalt be saved. For with the heart man believeth unto righteousness; and with the mouth confession is made unto salvation.” (Romans 10:9-10).

. . . “If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us. If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. If we say that we have not sinned, we make him a liar, and his word is not in us.” (John 1:8-10).

. . . “And he is the propitiation for our sins: and not for ours only, but also for the sins of the whole world. (John 2:2).

. . . “In this was manifested the love of god toward us, because that God sent his only begotten Son into the world, that we might live through him. And we have seen and do testify that the Father sent the Son to be the Saviour of the world. Whosoever shall confess that Jesus is the Son of God, God dwelleth in him, and he in God.” (1 John 4:9, 14-15).

. . . “But God commendeth his love toward us, in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us. Much more then, being now justified by his blood, we shall be saved from wrath through him. For if, when we were enemies, we were reconciled to God by the death of his Son, much more, being reconciled, we shall be saved by his life.” (Romans 5:8-10).

. . . “For the wages of sin is death; but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.” (Romans 6:23).

. . . “Jesus saith unto them, I am the way, the truth, and the life, no man cometh unto the Father, but by me.” (John 14:6).

. . . “For I am not ashamed of the gospel of Christ: for it is the power of God unto salvation to everyone that believeth.” (Romans 1:16).

. . . “Neither is there salvation in any other: for there is none other name under heaven given among men, whereby we must be saved.” (Acts: 4:12).

. . . “Who will have all men to be saved, and to come unto the knowledge of the truth for there is one God, and one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus.” (1 Timothy 2:4-6).

. . . “For God did not appoint us to suffer wrath but to receive salvation through our Lord Jesus Christ.” (1 Thessalonians 5:9).

. . . “But as many as received him, to them gave the power to become the sons of God, even to them that believe on his name.” (John 1:12).

True Church / Bride of Christ Spared from God’s Wrath:

 Romans 5:8-10. “But God commendeth his love toward us, in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us. Much more then, being now justified by his blood, we shall be saved from wrath through him. For if, when we were enemies, we were reconciled to God by the death of his Son, much more, being reconciled, we shall be saved by his life.”

Romans 12:19. Dearly beloved, avenge not yourselves, but rather give place unto wrath: for it is written, Vengeance is mine; I will repay, saith the Lord.

1 Thessalonians 1:10. And to wait for his Son from heaven, whom he raised from the dead, even Jesus, which delivered us from the wrath to come.

1 Thessalonians 5:9. For God hath not appointed us to wrath, but to obtain salvation by our Lord Jesus Christ,

Romans 8:35. Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword?

Jeremiah 30:7. Alas! for that day is great, so that none is like it: it is even the time of Jacob’s trouble, but he shall be saved out of it.

Revelation 3:10 Because thou hast kept the word of my patience, I also will keep thee from the hour of temptation, which shall come upon all the world, to try them that dwell upon the earth.