Italy has a population of about 60 million. We are expecting "40-70%" of people to get Coronavirus in the next 6 months or so. The serious symptoms can last for several weeks. With approximately 15,000 confirmed cases, their hospitals are completely overrun.
How is Italy going to deal with e.g. 5-10 million concurrent cases?
Note: this applies to every country, not just Italy.
The sad reality is that it won't, people will be left home to die. If you think about it they are already preparing for that by telling people to not go to hospitals but to call their doctors first.
> With approximately 15,000 confirmed cases, their hospitals are completely overrun
Not all hospitals across Italy are. They have not saturated all national hospitals with 15K patients. It appears to be only a few public hospitals in the Lombardy region, where all of this started.
Good Lord that site is illegible from ads and nonsense on mobile. How did the internet get this way? I can’t even read what you are trying to say! It’s like the episode on Aqua Teens.
> Meanwhile, patients are left to die alone after a final video call with loved ones.
Dr Cortellaro, head of the emergency room of the Borromeo hospital, told the Journal.
"Do you see the emergency room? COVID-19 patients enter alone, no relatives can attend and when they are about to leave they sense it. They are lucid, they do not go to narcolepsy.
"It is as if they were drowning, but with plenty of time to understand it."
This is heartbreaking.
We need at least a temporary right to assisted suicide for these patients. It plays horribly. But the alternative is so cruel.
Disclosure: I have no public health credentials, but have been following this carefully. Please be especially careful about information sources. To quote [1], "There is a ton of bullshit being disseminated. Please do not disseminate anything you can’t verify. Science must prevail."
It seems inevitable to me that we will be in a similar situation in the US soon. According to graphs that are all over #epi Twitter and very consistent with each other (example [2]), we are approximately 11 days behind Italy in progression. Already in the Seattle area they are finding their capacity strained[3]. And it is clear it will get considerably worse before it gets better.
The best projection I have read is [4], by a UCSF expert panel. Key quote: "We used their numbers to work out a guesstimate of deaths— indicating about 1.5 million Americans may die." but please do read the whole thing for context.
I'm trying to avoid getting to anxious about this, but the facts on the ground are extremely concerning.
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[ 4.6 ms ] story [ 36.2 ms ] threadItaly has a population of about 60 million. We are expecting "40-70%" of people to get Coronavirus in the next 6 months or so. The serious symptoms can last for several weeks. With approximately 15,000 confirmed cases, their hospitals are completely overrun.
How is Italy going to deal with e.g. 5-10 million concurrent cases?
Note: this applies to every country, not just Italy.
By rationing healthcare. You save who you can. And try to ease the suffering of the rest.
Politics aside, China has shown that it can work: https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/china/
Not all hospitals across Italy are. They have not saturated all national hospitals with 15K patients. It appears to be only a few public hospitals in the Lombardy region, where all of this started.
https://youtu.be/pBLkLwz4Oyo
Dr Cortellaro, head of the emergency room of the Borromeo hospital, told the Journal.
"Do you see the emergency room? COVID-19 patients enter alone, no relatives can attend and when they are about to leave they sense it. They are lucid, they do not go to narcolepsy.
"It is as if they were drowning, but with plenty of time to understand it."
This is heartbreaking.
We need at least a temporary right to assisted suicide for these patients. It plays horribly. But the alternative is so cruel.
It seems inevitable to me that we will be in a similar situation in the US soon. According to graphs that are all over #epi Twitter and very consistent with each other (example [2]), we are approximately 11 days behind Italy in progression. Already in the Seattle area they are finding their capacity strained[3]. And it is clear it will get considerably worse before it gets better.
The best projection I have read is [4], by a UCSF expert panel. Key quote: "We used their numbers to work out a guesstimate of deaths— indicating about 1.5 million Americans may die." but please do read the whole thing for context.
I'm trying to avoid getting to anxious about this, but the facts on the ground are extremely concerning.
[1]: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/dispatch-3-dr-shlain-reportin...
[2]: https://twitter.com/HumeField/status/1237941418909257728
[3]: https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/health/short-staff...
[4]: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/notes-from-ucsf-expert-panel-...