I’m struggling to reconcile these high percentages (which I’ve also seen plausibly argued elsewhere, see also 15% of the whole population of Spain had allegedly caught it as of March 28) with my back-of-envelope guess from last month that like 2% population infection rate would overwhelm hospitals (if I’m remembering that right), or see Flatten the curve is a deadly delusion which said it would take a decade to reach herd immunity without overwhelming hospitals and getting a much higher death rate.
I suppose it’s some combination of (1) NY hospitals actually are overwhelmed, (2) a lot of people who would be hospitalized in normal times can actually survive without it, (3) or if they can’t, they are dying outside of hospitals, (4) maybe the average (hospital bed × days) per infected person is lower than I had previously thought. These are all perhaps related. Anyway, I remain confused...
(And thanks for taking the time to write this up and share your insights!!)
London hasn’t exceeded its hospital or ICU capacity (though its capacity was recently doubled with the new Nightingale hospital, it has hardly been used), and it has about half of the infection rate of New York—with one estimate here being that the infection rate was 7% in London on the 2nd of April—those cases should have long since progressed and made their way to the hospitals, yet the Nightingale still stands mostly empty (for the love of all eternity, I hope the NHS doesn’t shut the place down because ‘it wasn’t needed’). Probably, London could take New York infection rates and that would just about hit its new capacity.
That fits with anecdotal evidence—I know a nurse who works in a big local hospital, and she told me that although things got pretty dicey over Easter time, with PPE being reused, operating theatres etc. being converted to beds and ICUs, and everyone working incredibly long shifts, nobody was being turned away from the ICUs like in Italy or Spain. The hospitals in London have started to empty out in the last week, as they’re ahead of the rest of the UK, and still it never reached the new capacity with a 7% infection rate before the peak (that came on April 8th, not April 2nd).
Perhaps uncertainty in the Infection hospitalization rate is a better candidate than uncertainty in the IFR—has anyone checked out that 20% figure recently?
If found this study done in Santa Clara County confirmed the author’s point. They find infection rate at about 2.49-6.15% of the population. It also suggest that many of the IFR is between 0.12% to 0.2%. If that is the case, if we do a good job of protection, we may not overwhelm the hospitals. It also implies we are far from the herd immunity.
I’m struggling to reconcile these high percentages (which I’ve also seen plausibly argued elsewhere, see also 15% of the whole population of Spain had allegedly caught it as of March 28) with my back-of-envelope guess from last month that like 2% population infection rate would overwhelm hospitals (if I’m remembering that right), or see Flatten the curve is a deadly delusion which said it would take a decade to reach herd immunity without overwhelming hospitals and getting a much higher death rate.
I suppose it’s some combination of (1) NY hospitals actually are overwhelmed, (2) a lot of people who would be hospitalized in normal times can actually survive without it, (3) or if they can’t, they are dying outside of hospitals, (4) maybe the average (hospital bed × days) per infected person is lower than I had previously thought. These are all perhaps related. Anyway, I remain confused...
(And thanks for taking the time to write this up and share your insights!!)
London hasn’t exceeded its hospital or ICU capacity (though its capacity was recently doubled with the new Nightingale hospital, it has hardly been used), and it has about half of the infection rate of New York—with one estimate here being that the infection rate was 7% in London on the 2nd of April—those cases should have long since progressed and made their way to the hospitals, yet the Nightingale still stands mostly empty (for the love of all eternity, I hope the NHS doesn’t shut the place down because ‘it wasn’t needed’). Probably, London could take New York infection rates and that would just about hit its new capacity.
That fits with anecdotal evidence—I know a nurse who works in a big local hospital, and she told me that although things got pretty dicey over Easter time, with PPE being reused, operating theatres etc. being converted to beds and ICUs, and everyone working incredibly long shifts, nobody was being turned away from the ICUs like in Italy or Spain. The hospitals in London have started to empty out in the last week, as they’re ahead of the rest of the UK, and still it never reached the new capacity with a 7% infection rate before the peak (that came on April 8th, not April 2nd).
Perhaps uncertainty in the Infection hospitalization rate is a better candidate than uncertainty in the IFR—has anyone checked out that 20% figure recently?
If found this study done in Santa Clara County confirmed the author’s point. They find infection rate at about 2.49-6.15% of the population. It also suggest that many of the IFR is between 0.12% to 0.2%. If that is the case, if we do a good job of protection, we may not overwhelm the hospitals. It also implies we are far from the herd immunity.