Hospitals take all comers, so the % of bad eggs in society present more or less in the same % in the hospital. My last few years before I retired from a local hospital (suburban Seattle area), I had the Safety/Security Dept under my leadership. I was appalled at the daily violence against nurses and other staff. I had an officer retire after she got bit on her arm so hard by a patient she was helping control, it took out a chunk of flesh. While we had our own officers, we had to call in local police all the time for help, sometimes to arrest a patient or family member. The main causes were usually drug, alcohol or mental health related but sometimes when a poor prognosis had to be delivered, a family member would just cold cock the doc or nurse delivering the bad news. It was almost a daily occurrence that our ER was treating one of our staff who had been on duty and was attacked and needed treatment for a wound or injury inflicted by someone they were trying to help or a family member.
I retired just before Covid, but I can only imagine the increase in stress and crazy when you have people getting deathly ill from a disease many believe is some sort of plot or hoax. And when folks can't get the care they need as fast as they want it, it only gets worse. And then medical staff is in moon suits so you feel like you are in some dystopian end of times movie with no human contact. I can completely understand a need for a police presence.
One of the discussions we had, it was in planning for the aftermath of a major region wide earthquake, was about the fact that given the Seattle area scenario that less than half the regional hospitals would survive enough to be functional. Given that, the few that did survive would quickly be overwhelmed with patients. And as the event went on, with likelihood that only the hospital would have power (our generators and stockpiled fuel) and heat, we'd be further taxed by folks just showing up to power cel phones, stay warm and maybe get a cooked meal. We actually were researching with the National Guard the ability to get a significant contingent of soldiers and set up a military controlled perimeter so we had some hope of not slipping into chaos that would halt medical care.
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