Why Are the Navy Hospital Ships Mercy and Comfort Sitting Nearly Empty?

By Tactical Life

Amid the panic of a pandemic that was stretching its tentacles across the country, the Navy’s largest (and only) hospital ships, Mercy and Comfort, were whisked away from their standard duty to handle overflow patients in Los Angeles and New York, respectively. However, even though each ship is capable of handling 1,000 patients at a time, they both mostly sit empty.

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Mercy and Comfort Sit Empty

Since it arrived in San Pedro port on March 27, the U.S. Navy hospital ship Mercy has treated only 31 patients as of April 8. It released 18 of those. According to The New York Times, surgeons have performed only five operations: Repairing an obstructed bowel, removing a ruptured appendix and an inflamed gallbladder, and treating an abdominal stab wound.

“They’re certainly not the heroes the media said we’d be,” an anonymous source close to the mission told Tactical Life. “We expected to be overrun with patients,” the source added. “We got nothing.”

Empty Mercy Gets Sick

In fact, Mercy became the very thing it was sent to fight. Late Wednesday afternoon, one of the 1,200 crew tested positive for …Read the Rest

Source:: Tactical Life