These threads are moving way too fast for me to keep up with now!
This post from the previous thread, by dixiegirl:
Coronavirus COVID-19 *Global Health Emergency* #8
The bottom graph says inthe 2017/2018 flu season there were 100 hospitalisations (approx)for flu in the US for every 100,000 of the population, and that was a really bad year for total numbers of hospitalisations.
I think it was said that about 0.01% to 0.1% get flu each year for the US?
Sp 330 million divided by 100,000 is 3300, and that multiplied by 100 is 330,000 hospitalisations, peaking between December and April? ish. That sounds like quite a lot.
Let's say Covid-19 went totally wild in the USA (which hopefully it won't!) and 50% were infected between now and next April (we assume no vaccine until then).
165 million infected. Approx 20% hospitalisations would be 33 million. And 5% needing ICU would be just over 8 million.
So the potential worst-case scenario would be pretty bad. I think it's safe to say those figures would totally overwhelm the healthcare system, just by comparing them to the figures for flu and assuming the situation for nurses/doctors/beds/ICU etc in peak flu seasons aren't much different from the UK, ie. very very tight.
If we also assume that the virus will taper off in the summer months, I don't see the worst case scenario figures coming in the first 2/3rds of this year in the USA.
I need further thinking on what more realistic scenarios could be, with the assumption of the wave pattern dipping in the warmer months of the year. And if that pattern doesn't actually happen....then obviously it could be a lot worse, and maybe in that situation it would become more feasible for the worst-case type figures to become reality. Not necessarily quite that high, but enough to overwhelm healthcare facilities.
So, what would it take to overwhelm the hospitals if there are approx 330,000 hospitalisations in a bad year for flu? Twice that number? So I think that would take about 2.5 million infections in the USA would be really stretching the healthcare system, and that would be 1 in 132 people infected, approximately. And that is nothing near what the virologists are saying for the 60 in 100 people that could potentially be infected in a massive epidemic of a virus 'like' this that is fairly easy to catch/spread, could be spread when incubating/asymptomatic, no immunity in the population, and no vaccine.
So the 60% sounds really unlikely, yet the number is based on past epidemics...I wonder what kind of epidemics, with what kind of R0, and in what kind of societal and environmental conditions it can reach 60%? That is something to ponder.
I think it also illustrates pretty well why governments are taking this so seriously and even implementing lockdowns on cities and regions, and yet at the same time not wanting to go too overboard due to the adverse effects of longterm lockdowns and spiralling negative economic effects.