Yeah, I know, I ask a LOT of questions. Blame my parents.
Anyway....
So New York City claims 20,000 new infections of Coronavirus.
So far, it appears that the virus causes few symptoms in most people, at most 15-20% of them need ANY sort of care.
NY also claims that the "Hospitals are overwhelmed".
Really? They can't handle a load of 4000 coronavirus patients? Remember, they've already cancelled most elective surgery, and they have recalled as many retired health care folks as they can find....
The numbers just don't add up. Around 7% of people need some sort of care when they get Covid-19 on average. If the group of people that get it is older than normal, that number can double. At most, 20% of them might need some sort of skilled care.
so 20% of 20,000 is....4000 people. Probably less than half that will really need some care from hospital staff.
Four thousand people MIGHT need a bed and some care. Might. likely (at a max) 5% will need intensive care. (1000 people). Maybe. If these numbers hit the high end of the statistics we already have seen and collected for this disease.
Even if it is four thousand.....You gonna tell me that NY can't handle four thousand people?
Are their hospitals that poorly staffed? Are there that few hospitals per population?
Something doesn't make sense.
Anyway....
So New York City claims 20,000 new infections of Coronavirus.
So far, it appears that the virus causes few symptoms in most people, at most 15-20% of them need ANY sort of care.
NY also claims that the "Hospitals are overwhelmed".
Really? They can't handle a load of 4000 coronavirus patients? Remember, they've already cancelled most elective surgery, and they have recalled as many retired health care folks as they can find....
The numbers just don't add up. Around 7% of people need some sort of care when they get Covid-19 on average. If the group of people that get it is older than normal, that number can double. At most, 20% of them might need some sort of skilled care.
so 20% of 20,000 is....4000 people. Probably less than half that will really need some care from hospital staff.
Four thousand people MIGHT need a bed and some care. Might. likely (at a max) 5% will need intensive care. (1000 people). Maybe. If these numbers hit the high end of the statistics we already have seen and collected for this disease.
Even if it is four thousand.....You gonna tell me that NY can't handle four thousand people?
Are their hospitals that poorly staffed? Are there that few hospitals per population?
Something doesn't make sense.
No, you're just assuming (incorrectly) that the hospitals are empty at the outset.
ReplyDeleteBut they're not. Most are 60% full all the time, and most times, it's more like 80-95% full.
Like airlines, empty hospitals go broke. So you've leaned the system to the point that there's no surge capacity.
There are 62 hospitals in NYFC.
That's 15 admits for every hospital.
For most hospitals, 15 admits a day would crush them.
And Kung Flu patients spend not days, but weeks, as patients. Mainly in ICU. On ventilators.
You've been to a restaurant, right?
What happens when you're waiting for a table, but they're all full?
And then nobody leaves?
That's every hospital, every day, before this pandemic.
And ICU beds are worse than that.
And when you get 15 ICU admits, and there aren't any ICU beds, they stay in the ER.
So that's 15 beds that can't see anyone for anything else.
And a nurse can take care of, at most, 2 of those patients.
Normally, it's 4 or 5 patients apiece.
So your ICU is already full, then you lose half your ER to ICU patients on hold, and your nurses can't take care of anyone else, because of all the stuff they have to do for those really sick ICU patients they're holding in their ER.
Those 15 critical patients closed that hospital.
1000 of them close ALL the hospitals, in a city that has more hospitals than any one of 20 states.
So, where do the heart attacks go?
The strokes?
The seizures?
The car accidents?
The shootings, stabbings, muggings, fell off a ladder, chopped my finger off in a machine?
Everything else?
In a city of 8M.
They can't just suck it up. So they go to the next nearest hospitals.
Now picture a ship something like the Titanic, with 40 lifeboats for 2000 people, but 3500 passengers.
So you put 50 people in each one, and you can save 2000.
You put 60 people in each one, and you save 0. Everyone drowns. Because you overloaded and swamped the boats, and they all sank too.
That's the hospital system in every city, forever.
They can handle what they can handle.
And they aren't just sitting idle 24/7/365. in fact, if they're not mostly full most of the time, they go broke, and close forever.
Now, add more patients than they can absorb, and you swamp all the hospitals.
Welcome to NYFC today, and everywhere else in short order.
There are 900,000 or so hospital beds in the entire U.S.
If 100M people get Kung Flu, and "only" 5% of them need hospitalization, that's 4M patients more than we can handle.
There's only 60,000 ICU beds.
If only 1/2% of those 100M Kung Flu-infected people need an ICU bed, that's only 500,000 ICU patients.
Which is nine or ten times more patients in ICU than we could ever handle.
So they all die. And so do all the other patients we have in ICU normally, because it's full.
Interesting numbers.
ReplyDeleteSad.