Wow ! 😮
That is terrible for anyone to have to wait hours and hours for emergency service. So awful to think of someone suffering like that for so long.
I hear in some of the bigger cities or maybe it's the higher crimes cities, that emergency help can take a while to get there if you call. Never heard of it being so many hours though, but I'm sure there is much I don't know.
Here, in this small city, it would be totally weird to wait very long at all on a normal basis. We have local emergency services, but also our fire fighters are trained as first responders too and since all the districts have fire departments of some kind within minutes away, the fire department's first responders are usually on the scene before the ambulance can get there, even if it comes straight away and are able to start assessing the situation and giving some aid.
I guess you don't know how lucky you have it in so many ways until one day, it's no longer there.
Sorry that you had to go through that. Even when you are a person that keeps their cool and can figure out the best way to handle a bad situation, it doesn't keep you from being affected.
Ten hours that person waited a couple weeks ago...I can't imagine his death was pleasant and that the family is sitting around today feeling happy about the situation. Heads should roll...government heads, and yeah I mean literally.
I think, in smaller places response times can be less but, of course, most small communities don't have hospitals of their own and the ones they do have are often ill-equipped. They are beginning to upskill the firefighters here to respond in high-demand times when the ambulance cannot but that's not to transport people to hospital and offer the care an ambo can. It's a band-aid fix that won't help much in the long term.
As you say, it's the land of milk and honey where champagne falls from the skies and fairies sprinkle glitter on everything...until you're having a heart attack and have to endure several hours of agony until an ambulance arrives...but you die first. Oh well, let's all just move on...go play some video games and order Uber food deliveries.
But nah seriously, it's all good right? The world is getting better, thanks AI and Elon Musk, autonomous cars and supermarkets without cashiers and Amazon and Instagram and China and all the other bullshit they pass off as progress. It's all good.
Umm...but nope, it ain't.