5thhorseman wrote: ↑Tue Mar 24, 2020 10:45 pm
Strangelove wrote: ↑Tue Mar 24, 2020 8:14 pm
5thhorseman wrote: ↑Tue Mar 24, 2020 7:46 pm
a preventable tragedy
Although the Great Strangelove does frown upon one aggrandising oneself...
Yeah whatever. How much lead time has Trump had on this? And why is NY less than a week away from letting people die?
https://www.cnn.com/2020/03/24/politics ... index.html
Mayor Bill de Blasio told CNN on Monday that, as a result, New York City hospitals will make it only through the week before they start reaching "a point where people can't be saved" because of equipment shortages.
Sounds preventable?
Not sure if it would have been entirely preventable, because this thing has exploded rather rapidly. The problem is that up to 5% of those infected may need ICU treatment, and no country has the capacity to treat such a large part of it’s population in intensive care at the same time.
So, not only do you need to get hold of equipment, and hospital beds, at the same time as factories are closing, but you also need trained staff. And how long have we known this was coming? Since January?
Sweden normally has a total of 525 ICU beds. Right now a conference centre outside of Stockholm is being converted into a military field hospital that can take 200 additional ICU patients, and another military field hospital is opening in Gothenburg with some 20 ICU places. Thay are also postponing as much surgery as possible, to minimize the need of ICU treatment post surgery. At present there are just some 50 corona patients in ICU treatment, but when this shit peaks it could rapidly become over 1000... Even though we have raised capacity by nearly 50%, we could still fall short.
As for staff... a training hospital in Stockholm is taking in stewards and stewardesses from SAS (Scandinavian Airlines Systems have given notice to 90% of their staff) to give them a three week crash course in health care. They will not become proper nurses, of course, but should be able to assist at the hospital and let the real staff focus on life and death matters.
Also, the authorities have made lists of people with medical training, both doctors and nurses, that have left the industry, and could, if we declare a state of emergency, order to report at hospitals where needed, Hospitals and universities have already shifted doctors away from research and training and into treatment.
But all these measures are not even likely to be enough. If the peak is too rapid we will simply not be able to accomodate everyone that needs intensive care.