Grim: Impending health care system overload due to COVID-19

[swag]

https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1236095180459003909.html

Very grim scenario

by
Liz Specht
@LizSpecht

Excerpts:
. . .


Importantly, I cannot stress this enough: even if I’m wrong – even VERY wrong – about core assumptions like % of severe cases or current case #, it only changes the timeline by days or weeks. This is how exponential growth in an immunologically naïve population works. 22/n

Undeserved panic does no one any good. But neither does ill-informed complacency. It’s wrong to assuage the public by saying “only 2% will die.” People aren’t adequately grasping the national and global systemic burden wrought by this swift-moving of a disease. 23/n

I’m an engineer. This is what my mind does all day: I run back-of-the-envelope calculations to try to estimate order-of-magnitude impacts. I’ve been on high alarm about this disease since ~Jan 19 after reading clinical indicators in the first papers emerging from Wuhan. 24/n

Nothing in the last 6 weeks has dampened my alarm in the slightest. To the contrary, we’re seeing abject refusal of many countries to adequately respond or prepare. Of course some of these estimates will be wrong, even substantially wrong. 25/n

But I have no reason to think they’ll be orders-of-magnitude wrong. Even if your personal risk of death is very, very low, don’t mock decisions like canceling events or closing workplaces as undue “panic”. 26/n

[defacto7]

1. Healthcare is THE issue now. Healthcare workers

and facilities are top priority.

[demigoddess]

2. As a result of WWII bombings, England instituted the National Health

As a result of this virus, will we be smart enough to institute some national health care system for the U.S?

[appalachiablue]

3. Great fact Re the NHS, please repeat this often.