Originally Posted by
Smiley90
The real problem starts once the number of infected is so high that hospitals will simply be overwhelmed and the percent recovery goes down. And so far the US (and other places) haven't been doing a great job testing and containing people with the increase remaining exponential. The worry is about the future situation because once we get there hospitals WILL be overwhelmed. That's the real worry.
A lot of us I'm sorry worry more about our elderly relatives than about ourselves, too, given that they won't have a flu shot and immunity as a safety "blanket" of sorts.
Good point as even a small percentage of everyone is a lot of people. That would be terrible indeed. I know the feeling, I have a parent undergoing chemo right now.
Originally Posted by
karenkay
for those who don't do the twitter, here's a lovely compilation of a math nerds' tweets about the possibility of overwhelmed hospitals and systemic healthcare failure in the united states.
worth a read.
https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1...459003909.html
excerpt:
The US has about 2.8 hospital beds per 1000 people. With a population of 330M, this is ~1M beds. At any given time, 65% of those beds are already occupied. That leaves about 330k beds available nationwide (perhaps a bit fewer this time of year with regular flu season, etc). 7/n
Let’s trust Italy’s numbers and assume that about 10% of cases are serious enough to require hospitalization. (Keep in mind that for many patients, hospitalization lasts for *weeks* — in other words, turnover will be *very* slow as beds fill with COVID19 patients). 8/n
By this estimate, by about May 8th, all open hospital beds in the US will be filled. (This says nothing, of course, about whether these beds are suitable for isolation of patients with a highly infectious virus.) 9/n
Yikes, that's right around the corner time-wise. I'm guessing those in the industry already know this and are keeping it quiet to avoid a panic and to help with planning. If a lack of hospital attention causes additional deaths then this could make the whole thing even worse.
Originally Posted by
trueblu
Re: potential outcomes,
this link about pandemic preparedness from Johns Hopkins, adapted from an influenza document, really tells the stark reality. There are two scenarios: 1968-like and 1918-like. Even the 1968 scenario is scary, but I think we're actually more like the 1918 scenario.
Thank you for the enlightening read. It's almost as if it's better to get sick now and get better in case you need hospital treatment. But then I started thinking--if your body doesn't build immunity/it mutates, this will continue until there's a vaccine. If the stress on hospitals will end up being this much in reality and the waves of patients will keep coming, then this will be a highly significant event in human history.
