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If we don't slow this we will overwhelm ICUs, but your math is all wrong. You assume every single American is exposed, every American contracts the disease, and every American develops symptoms at exactly the same time. That is flatly wrong.

Here's the right math afaik. Over 15% of infected people need a hospital bed with oxygen to survive (that's the important number, not just those who need ventilator). Doubling time is a week or less. Hospital stay is two weeks or more. Infections should slow down once half the population is infected. We can mostly ignore the time from infection to hospital, because it's a constant plus a spread that's shorter than hospital stay. So at peak load, 50% of the population have been infected and passed the initial period, 75% of those have passed the initial period within the last two weeks, and 15% of those need a hospital bed to survive. That's 5% of the population or more. Hospital beds are way fewer than that, so most of these people die.

The only hope is to slow it with non-medical measures. Check the progression dashboard for your country: https://coronavirus.arik.io/ You can see which countries are serious (most of Asia - graph looks linear) and which aren't (US and most of Europe - graph looks like a hockey stick).

Where did you get that 15% number from ? From my understanding, a huge number of people infected by the virus are asymptomatic and go completely undetected. Given that, any estimation is clearly really hard to make, right ?

https://www.who.int/docs/default-source/coronaviruse/who-chi...

> Most people infected with COVID-19 virus have mild disease and recover. Approximately 80% of laboratory confirmed patients have had mild to moderate disease, which includes non-pneumonia and pneumonia cases, 13.8% have severe disease (dyspnea, respiratory frequency ≥30/minute, blood oxygen saturation ≤93%, PaO2/FiO2 ratio <300, and/or lung infiltrates >50% of the lung field within 24-48 hours) and 6.1% are critical (respiratory failure, septic shock, and/or multiple organ dysfunction/failure). Asymptomatic infection has been reported, but the majority of the relatively rare cases who are asymptomatic on the date of identification/report went on to develop disease. The proportion of truly asymptomatic infections is unclear but appears to be relatively rare and does not appear to be a major driver of transmission.

The article says 'laboratory confirmed patients'. Because the large majority of cases are mild (this is also why the disease spreads so effectively), it makes sense to assume there are people who went through the disease and were never tested.

>>...at exactly the same time..

and that's why they are trying to slow it down, we'll get it but in stages so those in dire need will get care and survive.

I think you've misinterpreted two items there (although they're ambiguously phrased and it would be helpful to have a source with clearer phrasing).

First, I think the 5% refers to 5% of persons infected with the virus, not to 5% of the entire population of the U.S., although this is the least clear part.

Second, the "critical care" part refers to "being admitted as an inpatient" (not being admitted to an ICU), as distinct from an outpatient office or ER visit.

I don't think the authors meant to suggest that the CDC believes that 5% of the U.S. population will require ICU care during this epidemic.

No. This is written ambiguously. It starts with

>As the virus continues to spread nationally

And then the numbers are listed as

>80% of the population may experience mild symptoms, such as fever or flu-like symptoms that they treat at home

If it were as you say, they would write x% of the infected population, or something to that effect. Then again, given all the incompetence I've witnessed lately across the news, it wouldn't surprise me if they ambiguously wrote it by mistake.

In any case, you'll note that China just shut down it's entire industry for two months over this. That's not something an authoritarian state does lightly. Especially considering it may, say, make it obvious that sending all of your production offshore to China is a national security threat.

Edit: Italian Prime Minister just made a 2AM press announcement of the Isolation of Lombardy. That's 16 million people. We're approaching the right ballpark here. 8% of the Iranian parliment have confirmed cases. Two are already dead. This is everything we've been warning you about.

It might be written ambiguously, but one should not interpret it to mean that 100% of people in the U.S. will be infected.

Especially when the "80%" is followed by:

> 80% of the population may experience mild symptoms, such as fever or flu-like symptoms that they treat at home

> 15% may seek medical care, such as visiting an Urgent Care or Emergency Department

> 5% may require critical care, meaning being admitted as an inpatient

>https://www.businessinsider.com/presentation-how-hospitals-a...

This source from business insider reports that the US gov is preparing for 96 million infections. 5% is almost 5 million hospitalizations.

At this point you people just don't want to believe. This is not yet another flu scare. This is the real fucking deal. A historic pandemic. Prepare while you can. Just look at what's going on in what, 10 countries now? Millions of people placed on lockdown in Western nation's now? Italy just locked down 16 million people on Lombardy. French PM says he doesn't think the virus can be contained.

It is only prudent at this point to stock up on nonperishables. This isn't just to protect yourself - if you get the virus it will be responsible to sequester yourself in your home to protect the population. The irresponsibility of those who refuse to take this seriously and prepare is putting all of us at risk now. The U.S. is NOT EQUIPPED to handle this kind of outbreak. The system WILL BE OVERWHELMED in the next 1-6 weeks. And if China, SK, et al. are any indication, it will drag on for months.

Nobody said you shouldn’t be prepared. The system will be overwhelmed (and probably already is from the flu this year).

We’re just saying not 100% of people are going to be infected. Even your business insider article is not saying that. Stop moving the goalpost. Sometimes we're wrong or we misread something, and that's okay.

So one thing to note is that the “population” referred in the doc you linked is talking about people that are infected, not the general population. Of course, that doesn’t make the outlook that much better: if history is any guidance, H1N1 likely infected 15% of the world’s population[0], and interpolating that makes the required number of beds ~3 million. That’s still a lot of beds, but a lot more manageable. With techniques to delay the arrival as much as possible (e.g. at least wait out the flu season), and to avoid spikes, we’ll make it through this.

It’s still undoubtedly a monumental event in history, but we will make it through.

[0]: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2009_flu_pandemic

Well, some of us will. Assuming I survive, I'll be spending some time keeping track of the people I know of who didn't.

The stated source: https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/69/wr/mm6909e1.htm does not seem to have anything about 5% nationwide requiring ICU care although I've not checked the links within that. But it does seem a bit off.

I agree it is difficult moment in history. However, remember that those 18+ Mio won’t need the beds at the same time. Still a bad situation.

You’re right. If the 100k figure for beds is right, and each case needs to be hospitalised for a week, then we’ll be fine as long as we can drag the epidemic out over no less than 3-4 years.

The issue is not-so-slightly different.

The total number of places available in a given country in ICU's is (assuming a perfect world) the exact needed amount for "ordinary" cases + some slack, let's say 10%.

So you cannot count the total number of available beds as if they were free, as 90% (or change the percentage according to the specific country) are always, constantly, in use for patients affected by other - totally unrelated to Covid-19 - issues.

Part of these "ordinary" cases can be reduced (as an example by delaying a number of not-really-urgent surgery interventions) but this is also not without consequences.

Good call, I was treating total beds as free beds when in fact the number of free beds is somewhere between zero and 10% of that. It won't take much at all to overwhelm the available ICU resources.

If we don't reduce the current 'doubling every 7 days' growth rate, then at the end of the epidemic most of them will.

  5% Nationwide will require ICU care. That's 18.5 million people.

No, that is not what the CDC says, and it is not even remotely what your link says.

It says "5% of those who contract Covid-19" would require ICU, which is .5% of those exposed to Covid-19, which is itself a small subset of the population.

You're off by well over two orders of magnitude!