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There are a LOT of overwhelmed docs in places like New Orleans and NYC. I feel for those folks, they're getting their butts kicked. But their experience is NOT the norm. Their experience is a product of 1) high population density; 2) high rate of homelessness and poverty, with a consequent 3) low level of general health in the community. Couple that with the fact that people with severe diabetes, kidney disease, respiratory disease, and heart disease tend to move into centers near hospitals, so you have a higher-than-normal population of very sick people, on top of the already very high density of population.
So of course we expect the major urban centers to get hit hard.
The problem you get with docs in that sort of front-lines scenario is they often think they are more "in the know" than folks who are standing back and looking at the whole problem. I've been guilty of that myself. And the front-lines doc is usually wrong. He can't see the forest for the trees.
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then goes on to say 80% of patients on ventilators are dying. Again, the numbers don't line up. According to the numbers he provides, his small hospital doesn't have enough ventilators to serve the number of patients he says are being intubated....
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Thank you for your informative and thoughtful posts. Appreciate it and the work "you people" do in general.
I wanted to share some experiences of people i know and trust implicitly:
So far in two large NY hospitals between 0 and 15% of patients on a vent survive. They are slammed right now, and likely for all of the reasons you laid out (density, poor healthy density, homeless etc etc)
I have several friends who were positive and recovered at home, and a few who didnt get tested, got it while family had it, and recovered/recovering fine. They are all in good health prior, and they said ti was a VERY bad 3 days in a bad flu like week-10 days. One acquaintance with obesity, diabetes, and a I am sure a few other cardio-existing issues is on a vent and reports are not good at all.
It is everywhere here, I am have little doubt that the numbers of infected are full orders of magnitude higher than what we know (via testing).
Hospitals in my immediate area, the outskirts of 3 red hot zones, have shifted all resources to covid and are currently not overwhelmed.
Just fyi.
