Ach, the old man was clearly in the same room as Nick because he too is experiencing the sweet, soft touch of lady H.

 

Exactly. If in that page 1 of 6 released document it states that reanimated bodies are to be treated as a biological hazard, a spike to the skull and throw the body in the incinerator would work, unless someone is there to take samples for the CDC. At some point, pretty soon I'd imagine, you can't burn them fast enough.

 

I agree with you on this. Also, that explains why both Nick and the old man were in restraints. The hospital already knew.

 

The old man actually wasn't in restraints. Only Nick was. The way the staff is acting is consistent with them knowing about the new amendments to protocols regarding resuscitation methods and treatment of the deceased, but not knowing why those amendments were made. They didn't seem to know about reanimation at the time the old man coded.

 

I don't think it's unusual for the two of them to be in the same room, well, on the first day of nick's admission at least. Remember he was in the hospital after being hit by a car, and they may have wanted close observation on him in case of unrecognized internal bleeding or something that could go bad quickly. Looking at the way he was walking, he either is 90 years old, has Glenn's massive dump in his pants, or was hurt pretty badly.

 

I totally believe the hospital staff knew. Getting him out of there like that shows that.

 

I believe the staff did know that something was up and there was a crowding issue. I think it would have been better if the the nurse brought a doctor in after detecting high fever and they had the old man moved by orderlies and put him in restraints. Travis should see this and not Nick who could be asleep. More reason for Travis to search the church.

 

The old man might not have had a high fever. I don't think he was in the hospital with a bite. It appears that the hospital only knew that new protocols were in effect about duration of resuscitation and rapid removal of the body after resuscitation was not successful. They didn't appear to know why. The only man wasn't even restrained.

 

True. I went to the ER once to get my mouth sowed back together and was put a room with an old woman that was dying. Her family came in to tell her good bye. I felt very uncomfortable. like I was spying on something that was very private and personal. The entire time my mouth was being stitched all I could here was the old woman's labored breath and the sobbing of her grandchildren.

 

Calling this a plot hole is a bit of an overstatement. The flu is already making the hospital a hectic workplace; to me it would be a plot hole if the hospital has already got a well thought out plan to deal with the reanimated dead after seeing some (I assume it took some time before all the dead started rising) of them refusing to stay dead.

BTW, rabscuttle1, are you going to make up different stories about how you got the scars?

 

The hospital scene didn't bother me at all. If I WAS to be bothered by it, the reason would be that the staff wasn't taking ENOUGH precautions, IOW having them being gowned and gloved, face shields, etc., before getting near him. A suspected pathogen shows up that appears to reanimate anyone who dies, and you approach it in a blase/ fashion? Not likely!

 

I don't think they knew that everyone was re-animating until near the end of the episode, after Nick absconded. I think before that they were just following the new mandatory guidelines regarding the treatment of the freshly dead, but didn't know exactly why they were issued. The guidelines can be found on the AMC story sync for the episode. It outlines the new protocol to physicians but it doesn't explain why.

 

People die in hospitals every single day. People talk in hospitals every single second. How long would it take after the first dead body came back to life in ANY hospital before all the local hospitals knew about it?

After the second or third reanimation, it would be widely known this wasn't just a mistake in labeling someone dead who wasn't, and assuming the first, second, and third reanimated corpses all tried to bite whoever found them, and when restrained were noted not to have a blood pressure, beating heart, etc. that we'd associate with the living, I'd be shocked if the code team wasn't REALLY on guard by the time Nick arrived. Remember that Nick didn't see patient zero here, corpses were reanimating before he even went in to the hospital and were in fact the reason he got hit by the car. The hospital staff would have known something very strange and very bad was going on.

BTW, I tried looking on AMC for the guidelines, but couldn't find anything under story sync, do you have a link for them? Perhaps they're no longer available.

 

http://www.walkingdeadforums.com/forum/f591/fun-reads-amc-story-sync-121822.html

 

Well, the hospital Nick was in was suppose to be a pretty small hospital I think. They showed a clip of it from outside, and I think it was a somewhat small building. A small community hospital might not have multiple people dying each day. They might have days where nobody dies. Add that to the fact that some people take 12+ hours to re-animate. Add to that the fact that the entire population probably wasn't infected truly 'simultaneously'. There may well have been a period spanning at least 2 or 3 days before the majority of the population was infected. And that's being generous, because IRL it would take much longer than that. Even in a bigger hospital, they might not necessarily get clued in within the first 12 to 24 hours.

I think what they depicted in the hospital was actually quite realistic. If the dead had just started rising within the last day or less before Nick got there, I think its completely reasonable for the staff to be aware of 'something', but not in any detail yet.

My computer is acting iffy right now, but check the Pilot section in the FTWD area, there is a thread there about the Story Sync where you can read the new detailed protocol for treatment of the deceased. If you can't find it, i'll link you to it later