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?

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.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:A ray of hope for the US, our high number of critical care beds.

Lol, I wish.

That’s not even close to remotely accurate.

See: https://data.oecd.org/healtheqt/hospital-beds.htm

That’s a different metric. Your numbers show hospital beds per thousand. The chart shows critical care beds (which is what matters most now) per 100,000. I’ve seen the same numbers cited by multiple sources.

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.

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

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote: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

Tom and Rita were tested quickly and free because Australia. With their timing and symptoms, they never would have gotten the test here.

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.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote: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

Tom and Rita were tested quickly and free because Australia. With their timing and symptoms, they never would have gotten the test here.

Yeah it’s not fair to lump them into this.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:A ray of hope for the US, our high number of critical care beds.

Lol, I wish.

That’s not even close to remotely accurate.

See: https://data.oecd.org/healtheqt/hospital-beds.htm

That’s a different metric. Your numbers show hospital beds per thousand. The chart shows critical care beds (which is what matters most now) per 100,000. I’ve seen the same numbers cited by multiple sources.

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.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote: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

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.

Anonymous wrote: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

Tom and Rita were tested quickly and free because Australia. With their timing and symptoms, they never would have gotten the test here.

Anonymous wrote: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

Infuriating but not surprising.

Anonymous wrote:That dinner with the Brazilian President was discussed at great length in the Fashion forum, because Ivanka was at the same table with Trump and the Brazilian guys wearing a really unflattering dress the color the Irish Spring soap. (I personally liked the color, but I digress...). Anyway, the picture was posted repeatedly, and they were all sitting pretty closely, Trump, Jared and Ivanka with the two Brazilian guys and a bunch of other old guys. I actually am wondering if one of the American conservatives gave it to the Brazilians, after having picked it up at CPAC conference.

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.

Anonymous wrote:Bummer. I wonder why.

Wrong thread sorry.

Bummer. I wonder why.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:A ray of hope for the US, our high number of critical care beds.

5% of the ill patients need critical care. 35 beds per 100,000 is very different than 5% (5,000 people).

Your math is based on illogicality. 100% of the population is not getting the virus. Not even in Wuhan.

The problem is if 100 percent of the people who are going to get Corona get it at the same time. No one says all humans will get it. The problem is TIMING.

Well, we have three times the hospital beds for critical care than Italy does. And apparently the Italian average was even lower in Northern Italy, where the virus is heavily concentrated. The Italian problem was insufficient hospital resources for the very sick. American healthcare has long been proclaimed as wasteful and extravagant and filled with excessive facilities and resources, but this is the one time where it's going to help us.

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.

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

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%.