Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Coronavirus patients start to overwhelm US hospitals

edition.cnn.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

121–130 of 349 posts

Re: Coronavirus patients start to overwhelm US hospitals

#121

Post by 49para »

brenden2 wrote: post #14
BurningFrog wrote: post #11

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

Those numbers are going to go up if your hospitals are overwhelmed.

Additionally, a very large percentage of health care workers will catch the virus, this will further reduce the amount of capacity.

Loss of health care workers could be a long term issue as well given the CFR in a place like Italy.

Re: Coronavirus patients start to overwhelm US hospitals

#122

Post by TomMckenny »

Judging from the comments, explaining the severity of the epidemic is now politically charged.

Epidemiologists and the medical field have made it clear we are _under_ reacting. But apparently some politicians want to down play the problem and their obfuscation is echoed in every corner of the web with great zeal and again drowning out reality.

It's like the climate change denial phenomenon but at high speed.

Re: Coronavirus patients start to overwhelm US hospitals

#123

Post by mda »

vnchr wrote: post #34

Well, that’s some fear mongering. The article is all anecdotes. Most of the nurses and doctors they talked to are anonymous sources. According to the AHA[1], there are 6,146 hospitals in the US. There are 68,000 confirmed covid-19 cases in the US, and 33,000 of those cases are all in New York—almost 10x more than the next states (4.4k NJ, 3.2k CA)[2]. I don’t know the rate of hospitalization for the infected, but sym…

I hope you can make the same comment in two weeks. I think you are way too optimistic about situation.

Re: Coronavirus patients start to overwhelm US hospitals

#124

Post by steveeq1 »

mushbino wrote: post #70
steveeq1 wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can use the same argument for flu deaths, heart disease deaths, diabetes deaths, etc. The numbers that you pay attention to are dependent on what is popular right now.

The difference is the rate of those aren't doubling every three days.

This is true and conceded, but that wasn't my argument.

Re: Coronavirus patients start to overwhelm US hospitals

#125

Post by rimliu »

DoofusOfDeath wrote: post #13
rimliu wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They are useful to know, but they have one fundamental problem: they erode trust. Though it is up for debate on how much trust in the political system and mass media there is left in the US.

Can you elaborate on how they (the anecdotes, I assume) erode trust?

Simply: by telling lies. If we tell people 3 in 100 will die, and after the fact it turns out that 3 in 1000 died, next time, when it will be more serious nobody will believe.

Re: Coronavirus patients start to overwhelm US hospitals

#126

Post by vonmoltke »

enchiridion wrote: post #75
vnchr wrote: post #34

Well, that’s some fear mongering. The article is all anecdotes. Most of the nurses and doctors they talked to are anonymous sources. According to the AHA[1], there are 6,146 hospitals in the US. There are 68,000 confirmed covid-19 cases in the US, and 33,000 of those cases are all in New York—almost 10x more than the next states (4.4k NJ, 3.2k CA)[2]. I don’t know the rate of hospitalization for the infected, but sym…

Remember the US is short on tests, so I would assume a greater than 20% hospitalization rate because only the most severe cases are being reported.

According to data from the COVID Tracking project, the hospitalization rate nationwide is a bit under 10%[1], with NY at about 13%[2]. No doubt they are missing some cases, since theirs is an exercise in piecing together multiple, manually-curated sources. It seems to be a good ballpark estimate, though.

[1] https://covidtracking.com/us-daily/

[2] https://covidtracking.com/data/#NY

Re: Coronavirus patients start to overwhelm US hospitals

#127

Post by Ididntdothis »

TallGuyShort wrote: post #91
Zelphyr wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, I do. Helps that I live with a Nurse Practitioner. However, the number of people I know who are convinced that getting the flu shot makes them sick or gives them the flu and thus refuse to get the shot is shocking. Some things I've actually heard: "I get sick every time!" No, you don't. "It's a LIVE VIRUS! Everybody knows this!" No, it's not. You're just an idiot hanging around with idiots.

People are probably referring to the immune response. The flu shot does trigger an immune response and other side effects, so having a fever, muscle aches, etc. is not made up. I too have a far more severe reaction every time I get a flu shot than I've ever had from actual flu.

Same here. I got flu shots twice In my life and both times felt worse than any flu I have had without.

Re: Coronavirus patients start to overwhelm US hospitals

#128

Post by mgkimsal »

TallGuyShort wrote: post #91
Zelphyr wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, I do. Helps that I live with a Nurse Practitioner. However, the number of people I know who are convinced that getting the flu shot makes them sick or gives them the flu and thus refuse to get the shot is shocking. Some things I've actually heard: "I get sick every time!" No, you don't. "It's a LIVE VIRUS! Everybody knows this!" No, it's not. You're just an idiot hanging around with idiots.

People are probably referring to the immune response. The flu shot does trigger an immune response and other side effects, so having a fever, muscle aches, etc. is not made up. I too have a far more severe reaction every time I get a flu shot than I've ever had from actual flu.

my wife and I noticed this last year's shot was more painful - she especially had soreness in her arm for close to a week - in the past years it's typically been a day or two. Now... we're both getting older, which may account for some of it, but it can hurt for a while. And perhaps some people react other ways, which perpetuates the "I won't get one cause it makes me sick" scenarios.

Re: Coronavirus patients start to overwhelm US hospitals

#129

Post by lojack »

joegahona wrote: post #63
js2 wrote: 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'd love a more comprehensive discussion about the flu shot, because I've only used anecdotal evidence, and I suspect a lot of other people do the same. The first two years I got the flu shot from my employer at the time was 2007-2008, and I got a violent flu both years. Didn't get one after that for years, until last Feb, when I felt like I was going to die. Eventually went to urgent care, where I got fluids and she…

The problem with anecdotes around the flu shot is there's a clear bias involved. If you get the shot and end up getting the flu its because the shot didn't work. If you get the shot and don't end up getting the flu it might be because the flu shot was effective, or it could also be because you just didn't come in contact with the virus. You always get a reminder of when it doesn't work and you (almost) never get a reminder of when it does work.

Just to throw my anecdote in there, I'll always get the flu shot if its convenient, but won't usually go out of my way to get it. This year I didn't get it, but my pregnant wife and daughter did as part of their regular visits. I ended up getting the flu and was violently sick, and my wife and daughter who almost certainly came in contact with the virus from me had no symptoms at all.

Re: Coronavirus patients start to overwhelm US hospitals

#130

Post by SlowRobotAhead »

baron_harkonnen wrote: post #103
de_watcher wrote: post #82

It was easy to see the future: you just look up on the wiki the evolution of numbers of confirmed cases in the EU countries.

Given that the US is now neck and neck with Italy to be the first country to have more cases than China, we have been wildly exceeding any estimates based on EU countries.

Wouldn’t cases per capita be more important than cases total? And don’t cases recognized under back to testing? As in does anyone really believe Russia has zeros cases?
Post reply on HN