Charles Hugh Smith is one of the great “systems thinkers” out there—his comments on “the situation”:
https://www.oftwominds.com/blogmar20/covid19-complacency3-20.html
His math, once again focuses on the death rate. For general, public purposes, the death rate is not critical.
By that, I mean the flu itself will kill a minimal number of the species, so I am not focused on that.
What the virus will do is overwhelm the system, make a ton of people sick, and lot of people with other diseases—who otherwise would NOT die, will die as a result of lack of treatment.
Run the numbers of the virus in terms of ICU days. This virus will increase the average stay in the ICU from 3-5 days to 1-14 days. These figures are consistent no matter where the virus is.
There are approximately 18,600 free ICU beds in the country (about 80% of the 92,000 beds are occupied.)
The need is going to be about ten times that, every day across the country—estimated with low infection, hospitalization, and severe respiratory care needs.
Here is the other thing:
* You just don’t “manufacture” ICU beds.
* There are only some many sources of manufacturing. And the virus is going to impact our manufacturing base as well. So if you are hoping for this to move to the USA any time soon—re calibrate your thinking.
* You don’t toss inexperienced ICU and respiratory nurses into these situations. Working a vent the wrong way will leave a person a breathing piece of cabbage. You might as well simply let them die.
This is not about dying. Its about the care needed for serious cases. Even though that is a small number, there is not enough space in the system.
So the keys to take away are:
* Stay away from people to flatten the curve.
* Buy an extra can of beans.
* Whatever you can do to stay out of the hospital would be a good idea.
That has been the message since January. It will be the same for a while.
Thanks for the links and posts on Systems approaches.