Why are we so afraid that our hospitals could be overwhelmed by COVID-19 patients?
Reason number one: it’s a frightening prospect – people dying who might be saved, physicians having to decide whether to turn their backs on elderly patients in favor of the young for want of enough ventilators and ICU beds and people to minister to them.
Reason number two: it’s something that epidemiologists are projecting as a very real possibility because of the contagiousness of the virus and its possible rapid spread throughout an area.
Reason number three, and I believe the biggest reason of all: we’ve seen it happen in China and in Italy.
Not only have we seen it happen, but it’s probably one of the very first things that caught our attention. We perceived the suddenness of the influx, and the fact that this was not in what is ordinarily thought of as third-world countries where health care resources are extremely poor. Whether or not Chinese hospitals or Italian hospitals are exactly on a par with ours is not the issue. The point is that Italy is considered a developed country, and China a developing country.
So COVID-19 has been linked almost from the start with dramatic images involving desperation and scarcity of medical resources. That doesn’t happen with all the flu deaths that occur around the world, or the pneumonia deaths or even previous fairly large previous pandemics such as H1N1 or the 1957 Asian flu. It did happen, however, in many areas during the 1918 pandemic, and although most people today probably don’t have much awareness of that historical time, those of us who have learned about it know that it was a very tough situation.
Back in 1918, of course, medical science couldn’t do as much as it can now. There weren’t mechanical ventilators back then; the first one was the iron lung, invented in 1928. Now, though, because there’s more good that medicine can do in these extreme cases, there’s more angst at not having recourse to it.
This seems exactly right.
watching the president’s news conference today
Is like watching an attack of the zombies.
The (so-called) journalists show their IQ < 80, and are attempting to eat the brains of the Trump health task force.
The questions are more like attack editorials, and continue to propagate falsehoods and even implicitly accuse Trump of lying.
They are completely useless for conveying real information to the American public.
Now the televised conference with the governors is showing the strength of the Trump administration for communicating and making decisions in real time.
Another aggravating factor might be that we are constantly told that every other health system in the world is better than ours.
So, then next time you hear how our healthcare system sucks, and Trump is an idiot, ask the genius you are talking to why the US situation doesn’t look like Italy on steroids, given we have five times their population.
I asked a supposedly educated woman this question a couple of days ago, and she said it was because the Democrats have been forcing Trump to do the right things. I suppose she meant they forced him to close the borders to Chinese travelers in January while they were trying to impeach him? Calling him a xenophobic racist for doing so must have been reverse psychology.
Not only Italy and China. Spain has reached that point too. In a hospital in Madrid they tested the whole health staff yesterday, and half of them were infected.
https://www.vozpopuli.com/espana/madrid/sanitarios-hospital-Paz-Madrid-coronavirus-positivo-virus_0_1337866939.html
That’s been the major worry, that our emergency care would be overwhelmed. With the new treatments just approved, which will help many serious cases resolve positively and fairly quickly, that fear should recede.
It’s clear to me that, in the midst of the impeachment nonsense, Trump’s executive decision to restrict travel from China gave us time and saved many, many American lives.
13,159 confirmed US cases..
176 deaths
over 4 years of economic progress erased..
the Trillion dollar virus…
I will claim to be the first to give it that name..
the newer cases on the confirmed list gives us a 1.33% death rate
over the next week this will drop a lot…
next time, we wont be so lucky, because no one will listen..
like having only one rescue flair, the left blew it (too early)
We are afraid because this is what economic warfare is…
there are no craters or things that will let you know clearly
but its a psyops game… using the emergency system to message everyone in NYC… closing things down as if there is a plague… destroying economy…
What would destroying a capitalist global system look like?
overt war vs covert war…
once so many had nuclear weapons the first was off the table..
keep the afraid and force them to make maladaptive choices that ripple
shake their confidence tree, and gather the fruits…
There must be a number of different factors as to why Italy seems to be much worse than other countries in terms of fatalities. But one of them is a state run rationed healthcare system that uses a healthcare success metric known in the U.K. as QALYs, or something very similar. (Hat tip to Mark Steyn.)
The Italian or British healthcare people don’t just count deaths as a type of immutable failure. They count QALYs added by their service. A QALY is a Quality Adjusted Life Year. While it is a truism that statistically a healthy 50 year old has more years left than a healthy 75 year old, the QALY system says that one of the 50 year old’s years is worth more than one of the 75 year old’s years. So saving a 50 year old isn’t worth 3 or 4 times more, it’s worth maybe 10 or 15 times more.
Now compare the QALY difference in saving a healthy 50 year old compared to a 75 year old with poor health. In that case, the old sick guy is practically worthless. When the hospital becomes overwhelmed, the old guy with pre-existing conditions is pushed to the back of the line.
Here is what Breitbart had to say about the epidemic in Italy:
“The questions are more like attack editorials, and continue to propagate falsehoods and even implicitly accuse Trump of lying.” — Edward
I was listening to the presser today as well (which I have never done until recently, but AesopSpouse is home working all day now and tunes them in) and noticed the vampire media on the prowl.
However, I was very impressed with a female reporter from OAN who used exactly their MO to make a statement about the situation and tee up a response from Trump for which he had clearly been looking for a cue line.
In re Italy vs Germany recovery rates: the difference has been reported to be dependent on the number of acute care and even just regular hospital beds available.
Of course, I can’t find that particular article now, but here are some informational ones that support that suggestion.
Bar graphs of beds available 2 years ago, mouse over each bar for country name & number per 100K population. In 2017, Germany had about 600, Italy only 262.
https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-explained/index.php/Healthcare_resource_statistics_-_beds
Wikipedia tracks everything pretty close to real time.
Again, German hospitals have way more beds per capita than do Italian ones.
It may not make you feel better to know that Italy has more than we do.
Top ranked 1-4: Japan, South Korea, Russia, and Germany.
However, Germany has way more intensive & critical care beds than most countries, and we have more than they do. Top number for those is Turkey, BION.
Very interesting numbers in this chart, which do not (of course) match up with the first source I linked.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_hospital_beds
A model of when the number of patients will exceed the number of beds, for the geeks in the house. Only covers Germany and Washington state, but the methodology was quasi-plausibe: there is an awful lot of guessing in models.
(Assume all chickens are spherical, if you happen to know that joke.)
However, it does show clearly why we are panicking now, before the beds start getting filled up.
https://medium.com/@trentmc0/when-does-hospital-capacity-get-overwhelmed-in-usa-germany-a06cf2835f89
Be very glad that the Democrats are not in charge.
https://theconservativetreehouse.com/2020/03/19/former-obamacare-official-spreads-panic-on-msnbc-demands-all-masks-sent-to-new-york-city/
This is an excellent explanation of why the grocery stores are short of food and when that will be rectified.
Well, we know “why” – Chinese Flu; it’s the details of the “how come” that are described.
https://theconservativetreehouse.com/2020/03/19/specific-retail-food-shortages-will-not-soon-improve-but-the-overall-food-supply-chain-is-very-strong/
The mentions of various “stockpiles” of things like masks and ventilators are of relatively small numbers of these essential items–for instance, I’ve seen numbers like 2,000 or 5,000 ventilators that the military might be able to come up with.
(There was a mention on Fox last night, that part of the ventilator shortage has to do with the fact that the Chinese are not shipping us the circuit boards that are the key component in these ventilators, as well something that I’ve heard reported before–that a boatload of masks from China that was headed for the U.S. was ordered to turn around and head back to China, so that the Chinese could use these masks).
Thus, my impression is that, while we do have certain “emergency stockpiles,” the quantities of these items in them are nowhere near the quantities that are likely be needed.
Given Globalism and world-wide travel, outbreaks like this are likely to reoccur in the future, thus, to prepare for that likely future, such “stockpiles” will have to be built up to much higher levels.
P.S. According to the linked article below New York Mayor DeBlasio announced last night that he was asking the Federal government for “three million N95 masks, 50 million surgical masks, 15,000 ventilators. The list also includes surgical gowns, coveralls, gloves and face masks, for which the city is seeking 25 million of every item.”*
Just where does he think these enormous quantities of these critical items are going to come from?
* See https://gothamist.com/news/coronavirus-updates-cuomo-shelter-in-place-scary?sf119443128=1
Snow, isn’t it ironic that NYC, which bills itself as the center of the universe in so many ways, runs to the Federal government for those supplies? I have a suggestion for de Blasio; go buy them.
With respect to the thrust of Neo’s article; the fear is real among medical people. My daughter in a LA County hospital has been sounding that alarm long before the situation in Italy became so severe.. Like so much that we hear lately, I have no idea whether it is justified. She also reports that some private hospitals are dumping virus patients into the county system, simply because they don’t want them. I should think that could be prohibited, if it isn’t already. Morning rag reports that Gov of California has requested a hospital ship. Interestingly, I can recall that during the H1N1 event, a Catholic hospital here in SoCal, where my wife went for emergency treatment for severe flu related dehydration, had a large tent set up to handle less serious cases so the main hospital could be dedicated to the more critical. They coped.
Side note: in a heated discussion, which we both later regretted; daughter was trashing Trump’s lack of leadership. Among the complaints, she said that the U.S. (CDC) refused an offer of test kits from WHO and S. Korea because of–Trump. I later verified through a quote from a WHO spokeswoman, that they never offered test kits to the U.S. I don’t know about S. Korea. So, false information has infiltrated, and is accepted in the health care community.
Interesting that Newom and Cuomo are praising President Trump now that they want his help. Is it too cynical to expect them to return to the usual carping and slander once the crisis has passed?
Breaking news in the morning paper. Gov Newsom has shut down California, by restricting us to our homes except for state approved activities. Again, no one knows whether this is actually necessary or will even be beneficial. But, he is doing it, because he can. He calls it a “hard, but necessary decision”.
Sorry Governor, the Mayor of LA beat you to the punch by minutes. A true leader. He acted right after the second death was announced in LA county. We are told that a younger person died. We are not told, and never are, what what other health issues were a factor. His death justifies ramping up fear and control.
I have no idea how they intend to enforce their restrictions on the very large population of homeless people that infest the major cities. Maybe we will be required to take them into our homes. Now, that assertion is intentionally apocryphal. Isn’t it?
The genie is out of the bottle. Politicians at every level are ramping up and squeezing down. Because of the effects of intended and unintended consequences, it could be a very long time, if ever, before this country looks anything like it did on 1/1/2020.
The consent of the governed.