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Comment by fourmyle | Hacker News Reader

There are zero hospitals in America that over capacity right now including NYC.

The NYTimes article seems to disagree with you [1]

> Across the city, hospitals are overrun. Patients have died in hallways before they could even be hooked up to one of the few available ventilators in New York. Doctors and nurses, who have had to use the same protective gear again and again, are getting sick. So many people are dying that the city is running low on body bags.

[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/02/nyregion/ny-coronavirus-u...

You do understand that the outbreak has exponential growth which has not peaked anywhere? Even NYC cases will likely double this week before their peak. If anywhere in fact is "over capacity" now then they'll be in much deeper shit than they are now, which is already pretty deep.

I'm not sure what you mean by "over capacity", either. If you're talking beds, ICU slots, and ventilators, maybe not yet. If you're talking lack of staffing, lack of PPE availability, general workload, then I think many are straining or over capacity now.

I am talking about the former which is true. I concede there is a strain on staff. There seems to be a belief out there that hospitals are already full which is not true.

It's also impossible to know if we if we have peaked or not. It's just like trying to time the stock market. The only thing that really matters is the death rate. The rate of cases doesn't matter and is likely under counted. We are testing more and more people which increases the case rate. If we tested everyone including those with no cases and found a lot more people than expected have the virus the death percentage would go down.

I am also skeptical of how the start of the spread in the US was determined. It's possible it was much earlier and early cases were confused with Flu and we are in fact near the peak of the death rate.

I'm in NYC and I have no idea what you're talking about. Many of our hospitals are well beyond capacity, the most well reported on example being Elmhurst Hospital. Go look it up.

The operative words are "right now", with the current evolution of the virus and the population not taking the measures seriously, how long do you think that is going to last?

25,000 cases to 250,000 cases in two weeks.

Give it another two weeks. Thank god people with foresight and basic math skills are the ones planning for increased hospital capacity.

More and more tests means more and more cases. More cases with less deaths means the mortality percentage is lower. The number of cases does not matter at all.

BTW God should be capitalized it's a proper noun.

How much of that is due to hospitals clearing out and refitting themselves to support what they knew was coming? Do you expect that trend to continue?

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