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Comment by cm2187 | Hacker News Reader

I am struggling to reconcile this story with the numbers of deaths so far vs the number of deaths in any given year. A french infectious disease specialist mentioned that 2017 had been a bad year for infectious respiratory diseases in France, with over 60,000 additional deaths in winter, to the point that it affected life expectancy tables [1]. I don’t remember any mention of hospitals being overwhelmed and doing war-time triage then.

It is possible than one hospital may be overwhelmed, but surely it cannot be representative of hospitals across Italy or even a region.

[1] for french speakers: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pb8Q1yr2cjo

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> It is possible than one hospital may be overwhelmed, but surely it cannot be representative of hospitals across Italy or even a region.

Sadly, it is representative of hospitals across all northern Italy: https://www.ilpost.it/2020/03/08/pesenti-emergenza-ospedali-... https://www.ilpost.it/2020/03/09/coronavirus-terapia-intensi... ("Affollamento e scelte difficili")

Flu season is accounted for in normal hospital beds and other capacity planning. A sudden huge surge in need for ICU care is not accounted for.

But my point is that surely these additional 60,000 people (and probably many more who recovered) must have gone through ICU.

Not necessarily, and maybe they didn't need artificial ventilation which is the big deal here.

Also, flu didn't go away. covid-19 is in addition to the stress to the health system caused by flu (and all other diseases) and in a very short time.

and also, even at the very lowest end, COVID-19's death rate is an order of magnitude more than Flu (0.1% vs 1%)

Which shows how damn important context is. Without 100% testing (which I don't think to be necessary) for COVID-19 and comaprative baselines case numbers aren't tellig us anything. Without the proper domain expertise to actually interpret the numbers that is. So whithout that particular domain expertise, epidemilogy and virology, I don't interpret the numbers or build models, rather I believe the experts to make sense out of them.

Remember with Flu, the doctors and nurses can't get it, and can't spread it. The danger with this is that all the doctors get sick/quarantined and then no-one gets treated.

Anyone can get the flu, even those with flu shots

They are much less likely to get it after having the flu shot.

Absolutely, but to say medical staff can’t get or spread flu is false

By making that point though, you deliberately making an argument to support the 'it's just like flu' theory of not worrying. Which is a flawed viewpoint.

I’m 100% not making that point, nor do I believe it

Ok. In that case let’s stop arguing and be friends :)

Thumbs up. Respect

> I don’t remember any mention of hospitals being overwhelmed and doing war-time triage then.

I remember my nurse friends freaking out in 2017 because they were having trouble dealing with the extra flu cases.

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