51, the healthcare system doesn’t have the capacity to handle what’s happening on the ground. They’re short on personal protective supplies which are desperately needed NOW.
In Portland the main hospital, OHSU, is about to go on lockdown tomorrow morning. The fact is, this is just the beginning stages of a pandemic. The more people that get infected with symptoms, the more that will flood hospitals. The federal government should be using its full weight and power to set up crash sites like the one being constructed in Washington state. Every state should be mobilizing crash sites and not waiting until it’s too late.
This isn’t just about statistics. If healthcare workers get sick and don’t get protective supplies, hospitals across the country will close their doors while potentially hundred of thousands will go untreated. To me, it’s a no brainer. Shut it all down everything for a few months, offer up a stimulus package, and get on with it. The more this drags out with certain states doing their own thing and not taking it seriously, the longer it will take to contain, and the greater the economic damage.
A 34 year old in CA died from it today. One of the first people infected in the Houston area (the cop that was at the cook off) was in his 40s and got put in ICU.
More than 1/2 of the people hospitalized so far in the US were younger than 65.
It’s dangerous to lots of people and we don’t even know how dangerous yet.
Drew you make very rational points. The overwhelming of the medical world is a valid one. I would offer this, if you want to convert military bases to hospitals I am good with it. Tell all docs in the country that are specialist we need you to be primary care docs in your region I am good with it. Seriously how many proctologist do we need?
Shuttering economies is dangerous on so many levels. Far more dangerous than this virus. Economies just don’t restart like nothing happened. Down stream doesn’t know how much upstream needs. This has a potential to be a calamity,
I get what you’re saying, but if the virus is allowed to run its course while the younger (working) age cohorts go about their business, they still have a significant chance of getting sick and not being able to work. As do their employees. As will do customers. Their businesses - and the economy in general - are impacted either way.
Pick your poison, I guess.
(For the record, I’m not happy about this, either.)
Randy come on, a 34 year old died in Texas doing something. The fact that a 34 year old died is not sufficient reason to shutter an economy. If that were the case we would never have built a sky scraper.
I’m giving examples because you keep talking about this only impacting the elderly. That’s not true. There are many more examples out there too.
And, you ignored half my post. More than 1/2 the people hospitalized so far in the US are not elderly. This is a bad deal and some of the early news out of China is showing that a lot of people that survived will have long term lung damage.
Please stop thinking of this as an elderly disease. It isn’t. It affects them more, but almost everything does. I needed cite many examples of young being in the ICU or dead, it’s already been done above.
Please stop thinking of this as a Chinese disease. Vast majority of American cases originated in Europe. There is no gain from acting like it all comes from China.
People with agendas are dangerous and often stupid. But they’ll be on to something else stupid in a couple weeks. Only the agenda people forget what they have done. Most Americans do not. That is all!
To bad Congress was tied up at the initial stages of this on some agenda!
Look at the statistics in goCoogs post. We have shuttered an economy. No one knows the economics of a worldwide economy coming to a sudden stop. This very well could be 1929 all over again. This isn’t 2008 when it was a financial system problem that could be fixed with coordinated cental banks working together. We have shuttered supply and demand. It has never happened before.
If you want all doctors who are specialists to become general practitioners for 120 days beautiful. If you want to convert military bases into hospitals, I am with you. If you want to nationalize respirator manufacturing and put it on war footing, I am there.
Shutting the economy down and all of its unknown unintended consequences, I can’t get there in an uberly dangerous world. Horrible economic conditions lead to horrible national leaders emerging (ie Hitler and the boys). If you want deaths you will need a million coronavirus to match the death toll WW2. Plus we still live in a world with many nuclear weapons.
We have taken a huge step into the unknown. I am sure my stance is not popular but so be it. I would have quarantined the elderly and I would not have shuttered the economy,
Indeed. Even looking at the stats in this thread that is driving this point, >10% of Washington’s deaths are from people that are < 65.
Even if you could quarantine 65M people that are 65 or older until we get a vaccine (and you absolutely can’t but I’ll run with it for a minute), at least half of the rest of the country would get this virus. There is no immunity and no vaccine. For example, more than 30M got the flu this year with a vaccine.
In this example, there are 330M people in the US with 65M quarantined, so ~135M get the disease. Using the Washington numbers above, ~1% of <65 year olds are dying. That means 1.4M Americans less than 65 would die from this virus using those numbers.
I don’t know that the Washington numbers will hold up across the country but it can provide a glimpse into what could happen based on what at least one state is seeing. In any event, it shows this clearly isn’t only impacting the elderly.
OK some points to explain the situation (warning a long post):
While flu may kill more (so far), its spread out all over the flu season so there is little risk or the health system becoming swamped.
Covid19 can spread very fast. Based on the Italian, and Chinese experience, Covid19 caused as many hospitalizations in a week as the flu normally does in months.
Covid19, while generally being lethal to seniors, can also cause serious problems for healthy young adults
The US experience so far (which mirrors China an Italy) is that 30% of all cases requiring hospitalization are under the age of 45.
Flu has a mortality rate of 0.1%! Covid19 has a mortality of more than 4% (i.e. 9,300/220,000 = 4.22%)
(Note: having said that, it should be pointed out that 4.22% is the mortality rate for those who actually show up to hospitals with severe symptoms. The actual mortality rate may be a lot lower (one study places it at as low as 1.3%) as most people with mild symptoms will recover, without the need to see a dr or go to the hospital. However this is also true of the flu!)
The CDC estimates that on average 8% of the US population gets the flu each year. This implies an annual mortality figure of about 28,800 over the entire flu season
Supposing that Covid19 infection rates are similar to flu rates (i.e. about 8%), we are looking at potential number of dead to be 1.2 million in a matter of weeks!
The greatest danger with Covid19 is the unknowns. Unlike the flu where drs and epidemiologists have decades of data and experience and can make pretty good predictions about how a flu season will unfold. With Covid19 (because its a novel virus), we are in virgin territory, with no history to guide us. So all models on how the disease will spread are based on experiences with other pandemics.
Unlike the flu, Covid19 causes permanent damage! It causes fibrosis in the lungs, for which there is no cure. And worse yet fibrosis once it starts spreads. You can control the rate of fibrosis growth but never stop it. The only treatment is lung transplant. Also, every time you get the flu, the rate of fibrosis growth speeds up, and your risk of getting pneumonia goes up significantly.
The decision to shut down countries and companies is not one to taken lightly. The only 2 countries to have had some success in limiting spread of the disease are South Korea and Japan. Both of which instituted widespread testing and strong quarantine regulations.
China seems to have the virus under control now, but that too happened because of draconian quarantine enforcement.
The Italian health system has been overwhelmed by hospitalizations. And they have more hospital beds per 1,000 residents than the US does! Italy has 3.2 beds per 1,000, the US 2.8 (or 15% lower)! Its embarrassing that the US ranks 32nd in number of hospital beds per 1,000!
This whole belief that a young person is less likely to die, while true (based on statistics) overlooks a lot of other factors that make young people still at risk to catch the disease, have serious complications that will require hospitalization (i.e. contribute to pressure on the healthcare system), and even permanent long-term damage.
