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Coronavirus patients start to overwhelm US hospitals

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21–30 of 349 posts

Re: Coronavirus patients start to overwhelm US hospitals

#21
post #3

While I'm not questioning the truth of these accounts, what annoys me about all these reports is that they seem to be anecdotes rather than hard data. It's really difficult to understand what's actually going on because the data sucks. It's hard to assess just how full hospitals are, which hospitals are at capacity, how many patients are actually testing positive vs. showing up at the hospital because they feel a bit…

It's kinda hard to get "hard data" in the middle of a shitshow. This comment sounds like someone watching a school shooting live and asking "yeah but what's the % of kids that got shot". Show some humanity dude.

[deleted]

Re: Coronavirus patients start to overwhelm US hospitals

#22
post #16

The 2017-2018 flu season also overwhelmed US hospitals: https://time.com/5107984/hospitals-handling-burden-flu-patie... https://www.cdc.gov/flu/about/season/flu-season-2017-2018.ht... My point isn't that we should take Coronavirus any less seriously this year. Healthcare workers have no vaccine for it. It's on top of the flu. Etc. My point is that we should take the flu more seriously every year. Everyone gets their…

I agree, this event has also opened my eyes to how important the flu shot is

Re: Coronavirus patients start to overwhelm US hospitals

#23
post #3

While I'm not questioning the truth of these accounts, what annoys me about all these reports is that they seem to be anecdotes rather than hard data. It's really difficult to understand what's actually going on because the data sucks. It's hard to assess just how full hospitals are, which hospitals are at capacity, how many patients are actually testing positive vs. showing up at the hospital because they feel a bit…

In Bergamo and surrounding areas the death rate is 5-10x higher than it was at this time last year.

Re: Coronavirus patients start to overwhelm US hospitals

#25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The only hard data we have are death numbers. They're awful enough: https://www.ft.com/coronavirus-latest Other hard data takes time to collect and will only be reliable once the disaster has swept through.

They're bad, but if you put it into the context of normal daily life it's not that crazy. Check out the CDC stats[1] yourself. On average there are about ~1700 deaths per day from heart disease alone in the US, according to the CDC data. [1]: https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/deaths.htm

If the number of heart disease deaths doubled every 3 days I would take heart disease much more seriously than I do now.

Re: Coronavirus patients start to overwhelm US hospitals

#26
post #3

While I'm not questioning the truth of these accounts, what annoys me about all these reports is that they seem to be anecdotes rather than hard data. It's really difficult to understand what's actually going on because the data sucks. It's hard to assess just how full hospitals are, which hospitals are at capacity, how many patients are actually testing positive vs. showing up at the hospital because they feel a bit…

81 people died of the virus in NYC yesterday. I think the large number approach of pandemics can almost sanitize the numbers of their humanity. Imagine 81 people died in a bus accident, or a fire, or a mass shooting. This is very serious and we're still at the beginning of it.

I wrote a comment elsewhere about death rates in the US. 81 people per day is not an astronomical number for the most densely populated part of the country, in fact it's well within the normal number of deaths according to CDC data. In fact, just compared to heart disease alone, it might be slightly on the lower end.

Re: Coronavirus patients start to overwhelm US hospitals

#27
post #3

While I'm not questioning the truth of these accounts, what annoys me about all these reports is that they seem to be anecdotes rather than hard data. It's really difficult to understand what's actually going on because the data sucks. It's hard to assess just how full hospitals are, which hospitals are at capacity, how many patients are actually testing positive vs. showing up at the hospital because they feel a bit…

It's kinda hard to get "hard data" in the middle of a shitshow. This comment sounds like someone watching a school shooting live and asking "yeah but what's the % of kids that got shot". Show some humanity dude.

This.

Re: Coronavirus patients start to overwhelm US hospitals

#28
post #16

The 2017-2018 flu season also overwhelmed US hospitals: https://time.com/5107984/hospitals-handling-burden-flu-patie... https://www.cdc.gov/flu/about/season/flu-season-2017-2018.ht... My point isn't that we should take Coronavirus any less seriously this year. Healthcare workers have no vaccine for it. It's on top of the flu. Etc. My point is that we should take the flu more seriously every year. Everyone gets their…

Thank you. Too often this comparison is made to establish the ridiculous inverse argument: We don't take the flu very seriously, so we shouldn't take Corona very seriously.

Re: Coronavirus patients start to overwhelm US hospitals

#29
post #3

While I'm not questioning the truth of these accounts, what annoys me about all these reports is that they seem to be anecdotes rather than hard data. It's really difficult to understand what's actually going on because the data sucks. It's hard to assess just how full hospitals are, which hospitals are at capacity, how many patients are actually testing positive vs. showing up at the hospital because they feel a bit…

> the seriousness of the virus itself seems questionable.

Half of the world’s population are or have been under some kind if restriction due to this virus. I don’t governments do that if they are uncertain.

> I don't think we'll really know what's actually going on for a few more weeks or months

I don’t think it is going to happen, but if the US does what Trump wants and ”lets it rip”, that will answer the question about the seriousness.

Re: Coronavirus patients start to overwhelm US hospitals

#30
post #16

The 2017-2018 flu season also overwhelmed US hospitals: https://time.com/5107984/hospitals-handling-burden-flu-patie... https://www.cdc.gov/flu/about/season/flu-season-2017-2018.ht... My point isn't that we should take Coronavirus any less seriously this year. Healthcare workers have no vaccine for it. It's on top of the flu. Etc. My point is that we should take the flu more seriously every year. Everyone gets their…

Got my flu shot last year, still ended up with severe flu in February. The flu shot is not completely effective.
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