Quote:
Originally Posted by Will
And yet, seasonal flu doesn't overwhelm first world healthcare systems and kill hundreds of people a day.
The death rate for seasonal flu is really low. The death rate for COVID19 appears to be significantly higher. The hospitalization rate for COVID19 is MUCH higher. Even healthy people are ending up in the hospital from this thing.
And the BIGGEST problem with comparing this to seasonal flu is that it's just getting started and countries are taking drastic action to curb it. You can't quote a years worth of statistics for the flu as a meaningful comparison to a few months of COVID19.
If it was left unchecked, if we did nothing to curb it's spread our healthcare system would be completely overwhelmed and millions would die within a year.
The irony of drastic measures to curb the spread is that if they work people will feel that they were unnecessary.
To paraphrase a quote I read a couple days ago:. Whatever we do at the beginning will seem like overreaction and at the end won't have been enough.
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Will, what is overwhelming the healthcare system are the number of cases that require ICU care along with ventilators. This accounts for less than 15% of all cases, but no hospital anywhere in the world has an ICU/ RT department that can handle this many cases at one time. The fact that the DOD has donated 5,000 vents will help, but you still need qualified RTs to run those vents and monitor patients. The clinical studies from France, South Korea and China on the use of hydroxychloroquin and azithromycin in early stage infections are promising. It going to take time to get this “bug” under control.