Quote:
Originally Posted by Defarse
"According to the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, the US has 2.8 hospital beds per 1,000 people. By contrast, other countries with serious coronavirus outbreaks have more on average: China has 4.3, South Korea has 12.3, and Italy has 3.2 per 1,000 people."
Quote:
Originally Posted by NickMPK
This would mean Italy has about 200,000 hospital beds. They’ve had 50,000 coronavirus diagnoses, of which maybe 10,000 might require hospitalization. So this would only be 5% of hospital beds. Why exactly would this completely overwhelm the system? Some number here can’t be right.
Quote:
Originally Posted by tgiggity
Ah yes, because hospitals typically sit empty, just waiting for a pandemic to strike
Quote:
Originally Posted by NickMPK
I understand why a 5% increase in demand would force some reallocation. But I would also guess that at least 5% of hospital procedures that require an overnight stay are not emergencies and can be postponed. Certainly nothing like “We can’t accept any patients over 50 for anything”. That’s got to be at least 80% of hospital patients!
I would also think that a lot of hospital beds are indeed empty most of the time in anticipation of an emergency situation or sudden spike in demand.
My wife had a baby a few months ago, so of course we were at the birthing center of our local hospital on several occasions. They had seven or eight rooms that could be used for patients/deliveries, but I don’t think I ever saw more than two of them occupied. But it was good to know they could handle a big surge in patients if needed.
Counting available beds serves a purposes but probably not much more important than counting doctors. It appears that the largest contributing factors to death as a result of COVID-19 are...
1) overall health of those infected (including all factors.. age, underlying conditions, etc.)
2) access to ventilators and similar equipment for those with the most acute symptoms.
IMO when all is said and done, it will be these two that are most responsible for numbers of deaths.