We are mimicking Italy—exactly.
Imho we are so far along that there is no way to stop us from getting to where Italy is now. The only question is whether it will take us two or three weeks to get there.
The reason is that it takes time to ramp up quarantine facilities (including health care facilities). In addition it looks like our testing is toast (not just _was_ toast, but _is_ toast and _will be_ toast) and is virtually irrelevant.
The only options left are banning gatherings, then quarantines, but without major testing you are flying blind.
At this point I can’t think of any reason we won’t be worse than Italy.
The testing situation is going to create an impossible situation.
But how are our hospitals holding up so far?
I haven’t heard anything about ICU horror stories so far.
That’s giving me hope. Such as it is.
We are Two weeks behind Italy in crashing according to the Daily Mail today .
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8095485/Will-America-locked-two-weeks.html
How many ICU beds has Italy? A source I saw said US had the most per capita.
“AHA data: According to the AHA 2015 annual survey, the United States had 4862 acute care registered hospitals; 2814 of these had at least 10 acute care beds and at least 1 ICU bed. These hospitals had a total of 540,668 staffed beds and 94,837 ICU beds (14.3% ICU beds/total beds) in 5229 ICUs. There were 46,490 medical-surgical beds in 2644 units, 14,731 cardiac beds in 976 units, 6588 other beds in 379 units, 4698 pediatric beds in 307 units, and 22,330 neonatal beds in 920 units. The median number of beds in medical-surgical, cardiac, and other units was 12, with 10 beds in pediatrics and 18 in neonatal. Fifty-two percent of hospitals had 1 unit, 24% had 2 units, and 24% had 3 or more units.”
https://www.sccm.org/Communications/Critical-Care-Statistics
All I can find now, but pretty impressive
Italy got overwhelmed because of their large Chinese worker enclave. We may not.