There is no such thing as 'the health care industry'. There is only a Medical Industry.

Health care consists in caring for one's physical self in such a way as to maintain good health and avoid illness or injury for as long as possible before age has its way.

Some have observed there is no money to be made from dead people, other than the relative pittance for the funeral industry, and none to be had from healthy people. As they say, the profit is in between. And the profit to be had is enormous, and there is no shortage of scavengers to collect it. Like the floating body of a dead whale, surrounded by creatures large and small, nibbling and gnawing at any accessible area with larger ones taking the chunks their jaws enable them to tear away, while the smaller ones feast on the scraps. The smell of death and decay troubles them not at all. And their hunger is never satisfied.

The vulnerable population of a developed and prosperous society provides a vast herd of hosts for the parasites of the Medical Industry. And they do not hesitate to create customers, whether by using advertising to create fear in the population to drive them to the doctors and pharmaceutical providers, or conspiring with the government to create medical 'emergencies'. But those matters require a separate examination.

In this case we look at the little parasites and scavengers, the ones who operate medical facilities and provide the supplies and services to operate them. Like their animal counterparts they are nothing more than eating machines, blind and unreasoning, consuming as much as they can of whatever is available.

Why?

Because it is there and they are what they are. In the animal world such organisms are described as opportunistic feeders.

But how do human beings become as them?

To paraphrase Sir Isaac Newton 'I can calculate the movement of the stars, but not the evil of men.'

~ Quiescent Benevolence 1663176911

She had actually worked in a hospital for a couple of years after getting her RN license.

One of the reasons she quit. Didn't like seeing people dying. Selfish? Maybe, but I just couldn't take it after...

"He's got a pulse." she said. "Breathing OK, maybe a little weak. He may be having a heart attack."

The ambulance would be coming from Methodist over on 412.

We're out here almost to Missouri. Damn city council. Methodist ambulance has to be called first. They'll fool around for a while if they don't have a unit. Don't want to call one of the other companies if they can avoid it. Council just voted again couple of months ago to leave it that way. All about the money. Everyone knew it, they knew people knew. Didn't care. Every year, someone, several someones usually, tries to get them to put the hospital on rotation with the other ambulance operators. There were at least two locals with several ambulances. Same results. Someone's gonna die one day, because of your greed. Please don't let it be Alex. Please.

And even if the ambulance was sitting there on ready. She did the math. Drove to work part of that route. Ambulance a good twenty minutes away, if we're lucky.

"Alex! Hang on, stay with me..."

Human Harvest (Quiescent Benevolence - 2023)

The racks of patch panels. Somewhere in there. Yeah. Cables. Hundreds, thousands of cables, running from the data center all over the building. And just a few, maybe three or four, to the telco. The fiber pipes. The gateways connecting inside to outside. Firewalls and routers. Disconnect something, put it back in the wrong place or leave it disconnected, stuff stops working. Can't get it back right, you got problems. And inside the boxes, the software got all kinds of switches and paths. A router config trashed. Thousand places to break things. Take a long time to fix...

The brain is an order of magnitude above a man-made network. Or more. What had happened to his? No oxygen for a quarter-hour? That doesn't make any sense. You black out in a minute or two. Three to five minutes is probably permanent damage. After that you might as well be dead. Machines keep you from decaying until they decide to turn them off. That didn't mess up his brain.

What about the drugs? Drugs designed to rewire the brain. What happens if they get used on a brain that doesn't need rewiring?

Human Harvest ~~ Quiescent Benevolence (2022)

"You can see the concentration in the south," Harry said, "but they're all over. Some of the hospitals they own, others they have management contracts with. Consulting. Supplies purchasing. All the ways the money flows."

"Laundering?"

"Pretty much. But all nominally legal. And hard to prove, if anyone bothers to investigate. And the IRS is about the only one that can. I suppose the Justice Department could get in on it, maybe for Medicare fraud or something similar. And they generally only go after for-profits for that."

"So they go nonprofit, make it even harder to audit."

"Buddy of mine," Harry said, "worked in CID with me, older guy. He retired years before I did, moved to Florida. Spends most of his time on a houseboat he has there. Neighbor is a marine biologist. They talk a lot, fish together.

"Guy knows a lot about sharks, says in a feeding frenzy, sharks completely lose control of what little mind they have. Sensory overload. They'll eat anything that comes within range, including other sharks. Even parts of their own body that was ripped off by another shark."

"Sharks don't have much of a mind, do they?" Alex said. "What excuse do people have?"

Human Harvest (Quiescent Benevolence - 2022)

Right." Harry said. "James and I go way back, we grew up together in Cherry Valley. He went into medicine, I became a cop. I guess we're both wondering about now, if we made the right choice."

"Think you'll find the answer?" Alex asked.

"Probably not in this lifetime. Both of us thought we would be helping our fellow man. Me protecting him, and James healing him. But we were kids then. Those ideals don't survive our maturing as people. Good or bad, I can't say. Some of both I guess."

Human Harvest (Quiescent Benevolence - 2022)

Clonazepam, olanzapine, seroquel, quetiapine fumarate, haloperidol lactate, quetiapine fumarate, seroquel, fentanyl... is everything a 'quil' or an 'ate'? There's a couple dozen of whatever they are.

"I would ask if you're serious." Jessica said. "But I saw enough when I looked. What were they using fentanyl for? An anesthetic would be the only possible use, or serious pain. That stuff's dangerous."

"No kidding." Mary Ann said. "I don't know if I've found all the dates and dosages. In fact the amounts usually aren't there at all. And the logs are all handwritten. Badly."

"I noticed that."

"And I haven't even started to get a coherent timeline. How much of what and when and how often. But from the looks of it, Alex had a dozen or more drugs in him at any time. And the psychopharmaceuticals are only part of it. Aside from the effect they have on the brain, these other drugs, antifungal, antinausea, can interact in unpredictable ways. And the fact that Alex was apparently not diagnosed, at least by a competent doctor, as being psychotic, bipolar, schizhophrenic... this doctor had to be nuts, forgive my inelegant language."

"Where does that leave us?"

"Let's hear from Harry," Mary Ann said, "and then you may have a better idea."

Human Harvest (Quiescent Benevolence - 2022)

"Let me show you what I've got on the operation. It's about what I expected. But you need to see, before we get too deep into this, what it may involve."

"Just a quick question," Jessica said, "not that it would let anyone off the hook. Was Roger vaxxed?"

"He was. I didn't know until he'd already done it, but he had to take it or lose his job. And at that time we didn't know what we know now."

"It wouldn't have mattered," said Jessica. "The whole world went nuts. They killed a lot of people. And most of the medical people, if they weren't already indoctrinated, were afraid to resist."

"Still won't," Alex said. "Then the hospitals were blaming every death on Covid, before long they'll be blaming the vax."

Human Harvest (Quiescent Benevolence - 2022)