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One positive note. I've been tracking the numbers pretty closely on the worldometers.info website. The percentage of cases designed as critical has actually been declining steeply -- it was at about 18% for a long time, and now it down to 9%. It is probably due to increased testing, but still is somewhat encouraging. The death percentage just crept up a bit, though -- it had been remarkably steady at 6% of resolved cases (so only about 4% of all cases, but 6% of the cases that were resolved through either death or recovery) and is not at 7%.
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Celebrities are getting coronavirus tests faster than everyone else
https://www.msn.com/en-us/health/health-news/celebrities-are-getting-coronavirus-tests-faster-than-everyone-else/ar-BB1198o2?li=BBnbfcL |
Italy hasn’t reached the bottom yet even the entire country is on lockdown. I don’t think we should be looking to Italy to compare. We have estimates how many people will get sick and when and how many beds and ventilators there are. That’s the data we should use to see how bad this might get. I also wonder about how things will compare by city. Do New York Cory and Salt Lake City have the same number of beds and ventilators per person? I think n that’s unlikely. |
| Bummer. I wonder why. |
Wrong thread sorry. |
Well speaking of Ivanka, an Australian official she met with on March 5th has also tested positive. And then she was at that dinner with the Brazilians on March 7th. So perhaps you're onto something. |
Infuriating but not surprising. |
Tom and Rita were tested quickly and free because Australia. With their timing and symptoms, they never would have gotten the test here. |
The article says they didn’t qualify for testing by Australian rules either. |
There are a total of 46,500 ICU beds in this country. Total, not currently empty. If 30% of americans get the virus then by current estimates that means 5 million will need intensive care. |
Yeah it’s not fair to lump them into this. |
This week Australia instituted a policy of testing for all with symptoms. I believe the Hanks were tested after this policy went into effect. |
Also to put all of these numbers in context. In 2017 there were a total of 139 million trips to the ER. 14.5 million of those resulted in a hospital admission (if 15% of covid patients need admission under the above conservative estimate then 15,000,000 patients would require hospitalization, DOUBLING 2017's year long numbers). The number of those visits that required admission to a critical care unit was 2 million. So covid has the potential to add more than twice the number of critical care cases to the country than we saw in the entirely of 2017. Math like this is hard to wrap your head around, but we are not prepared for a surge in illnesses, people will die. We currently have about ~170,000 respirators in this country (once again, total, not available). This will become a very very grave situation if we cannot flatten the curve. https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/emergency-department.htm |
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On the ground report from a cousin who is an MD hospitalist in a California city.
In [city] if you are an outpatient you can be tested, but if you are sicker and go to the hospital, you can't. My boss fought for 2-3 days to get a woman tested. When finally done, she was positive. Meanwhile, now 45 health professionals [unclear if her hospital or city] are sitting at home and they can't be tested. Had a guy in ICU for 2 weeks who went on pilgrimage to Pakistan. He tested negative for everything and we wanted to test him for COVID but no dice. We have a ridiculous undercount in [city]. This has got to be the definition of insanity. The back-up plans for ventilators is to use the ones in the operating rooms, which means patients will be far from nursing care and supplies. |
| I wonder why more states aren’t cancelling school. Michigan and Ohio have for the next few weeks and they don’t have many cases (12 and 5). Why aren’t Washington state, Oregon, California, and those states with much higher numbers doing the same? |