Reply to For the "Close School" Crowd, help me with interpret these numbers...

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]First of all, this is simply not true.

Here's the CHATS alert system. It updates in real time and there's no way for me to share a screenshot, but as of Jan 20, I see Shady Grove, White Oak, Montgomery General and Holy Cross on red alert:

https://www.miemssalert.com/chats/Default.aspx?hdRegion=5

Second of all, to reiterate PP-- [b]hospitalizations lag infections, by 1-3 weeks[/b]. (And deaths lag hospitalizations.)

We (hopefully) are just coming off of our high plateau that lasted about 2.5 weeks*.

I expect hospitalizations to continue to climb for at least 2 more weeks. It's not over.

[u]That's the mind-bending thing about Omicron.[/u] It moves SO FAST, that [i]even before[/i] people are hospitalized and dying in high numbers, people who had mild or no infections are totally over it and planning their Spring Breaks.

They say, "See! It's almost over and not that many people died, our hospitals are fine" and... that's not how it works. I mean, I'd be thrilled to be wrong, but you can look at hospitalization and death data yourself. It's trending upward, not down, and it will continue to do so for a bit.

NYT says cases are down 43% from 2 weeks ago (we also currently have 5-10x the cases we had 5-6 weeks ago).

NYT also says deaths are up 57% from 2 weeks ago.[/quote]
I'm not in any particular camp on this issue, but I think some of what you posted above is fairly misleading, and we should put in context.

As a whole, MoCo considers the hospital system to be "low utilization" when less than 80% of beds in the county are occupied. Right now, we are at 75%. This has been relatively steady over the past few weeks. Note that MoCo is holding up better than the state as a whole given we have a higher vaccination rate, healthier population, and better hospital infrastructure.

Your use of the CHATS data is cherry picked and is going to create unnecessary fear. First of all, 17 of the 26 Region V hospitals are not in yellow or red status. Second, what it means to be yellow or red is not quite what you're implying. In the normal course, hospitals go into yellow or red status constantly. For example, if you go back to the data before Covid, you'll see most hospitals frequently having brief temporary periods of being yellow or red. This is a way for EMS to route new patients to hospitals with the most capacity, and it's a function of the fact that our system operates in the normal course with limited flex capacity. For the vast majority of people, it is perfectly fine to go to an ER at a hospital that is temporarily in yellow or red status. If there's a need to admit and it makes sense to transport to another hospital, they will do that.

Note too for some context that one of the red status hospitals you cite above currently has a 15 minute ER wait time.

If the existence of some hospitals in the county being in yellow or red status means schools should close, schools would frequently be closed, and all of us would have grown up with 13 years of frequently virtual instruction.

As for hospitalizations lagging cases... the state data shows hospitalizations already declining. Acute Covid patients in the state are down 400 over the last week, and ICU Covid patients are down about 70. The peak of hospital usage from this wave was around January 10th. It has past.[/quote]

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