Forget Italy. Forget Spain. Forget New York, New Orleans, and Wyoming. We're now a week from Pearl Harbor.
I don't have a crystal ball, of course, but after weeks of hearing we're a week away from the aforementioned disasters, color me doubtful.
There's also the fact that Italy was a perfect storm. As Dr. John Iaonnidis of Stanford University explained in an interview (see video below), Italy had a very old population that smoked a lot, there were certain hospitals that were already at full capacity in the winter, and everyone was dealing with an unknown virus. After hospitals checked in all cases, even mild ones, a large number of medical employees got infected and had to sit out the flood of patients.
Another thing: the model being used to predict hospital beds needed has been greatly overestimating those numbers in most states. It predicts that today, Indiana needs 1,917 hospital beds. With 4,411 positive cases, and 3% of cases in the US being serious according to Worldometers, that's around 120 serious cases. For Indiana, the model is probably off by a factor of 15. Even if we caught up to the model, Indiana has 8,485 beds--more than twice as many as the model says we need. I thought the purpose of flattening the curve was so that the need for medical care wouldn't outstrip the supply. Aren't we there?
If it were up to me, low-risk Hoosiers could go back to work tomorrow. Why? In a state of over six million people, five people under 50 have died; nobody under 30 has. The average COVID fatality here is around 74 years old. The state gives the figures only by decade, but it's clear that for the most part, this illness poses little threat to young, healthy people--consistent with everything else I've read. An article in the Indianapolis Star said the victims had other health conditions. I understand why high-risk people--mostly retired--have to quarantine themselves. But the rest of us? Dr. Iaonnidis seems to think a quarantine just for the most vulnerable good idea.
There are costs to this lockdown: domestic violence is up, there's a severe shortage of blood, businesses are closing, and unemployment has exploded.
Hopefully, there will be a sense that this is over next week.
I don't have a crystal ball, of course, but after weeks of hearing we're a week away from the aforementioned disasters, color me doubtful.
There's also the fact that Italy was a perfect storm. As Dr. John Iaonnidis of Stanford University explained in an interview (see video below), Italy had a very old population that smoked a lot, there were certain hospitals that were already at full capacity in the winter, and everyone was dealing with an unknown virus. After hospitals checked in all cases, even mild ones, a large number of medical employees got infected and had to sit out the flood of patients.
Another thing: the model being used to predict hospital beds needed has been greatly overestimating those numbers in most states. It predicts that today, Indiana needs 1,917 hospital beds. With 4,411 positive cases, and 3% of cases in the US being serious according to Worldometers, that's around 120 serious cases. For Indiana, the model is probably off by a factor of 15. Even if we caught up to the model, Indiana has 8,485 beds--more than twice as many as the model says we need. I thought the purpose of flattening the curve was so that the need for medical care wouldn't outstrip the supply. Aren't we there?
If it were up to me, low-risk Hoosiers could go back to work tomorrow. Why? In a state of over six million people, five people under 50 have died; nobody under 30 has. The average COVID fatality here is around 74 years old. The state gives the figures only by decade, but it's clear that for the most part, this illness poses little threat to young, healthy people--consistent with everything else I've read. An article in the Indianapolis Star said the victims had other health conditions. I understand why high-risk people--mostly retired--have to quarantine themselves. But the rest of us? Dr. Iaonnidis seems to think a quarantine just for the most vulnerable good idea.
There are costs to this lockdown: domestic violence is up, there's a severe shortage of blood, businesses are closing, and unemployment has exploded.
Hopefully, there will be a sense that this is over next week.
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