Hacker News Reader

Comment by ryankemper | Hacker News Reader

Out of curiosity, to what extent do you feel we successfully flattened the curve in New York? Given that recent serology results showed between 15-20% prevalence, it does seem like it could have been significantly worse. But just to be clear we should note that we ended up having a massive excess of capacity as far as ventilators and beds were concerned (I'm guessing the real bottleneck is trained staff but am not sure)

View on HN

I am unaware of a "massive excess of capacity" in NY; quite the opposite. Where do you make that conclusion from? NY, to my knowledge, has been well over capacity and has had to take severe measures. Hospitals have had more patients than they can deal with and the staff is overworked. Elective procedures have been cancelled, no visitors are allowed, doctors and nurses who ordinarily work elsewhere are working in Covid-19 units. Chicago is not doing well either. To put my chip down: yes, I do think we succeeded in flattening the curve in NY. We started the lockdown late, so we could not prevent it from getting very bad, but had we not done a lockdown, it probably would have been worse for longer.

By massive excess I was referring to vents/tents. Estimates of vents needed were far too high due to the models being relied upon (i.e. not because we surprised ourselves with how flat the curve got given the seroprevalence was not expected from policymakers as far as I can tell).

Still, I _don't_ know about how we are doing in terms of healthcare workers. That's almost certainly the bottleneck and it may be that it's still a bottleneck. I'd have to do some research to say for sure. It's very possible my statement was not correct in that light.

Meta: I'm currently constrained to using one arm since I had a not-so-fun ER visit today, so I'm not really firing on all cylinders right now. So, if you happen to look into the NY capacity matter on your end, I would love to hear your findings.

I am unsure what the NYC capacity is right now, but I know in some parts of the city, patients literally died in hallways before even getting a proper room. I also personally know a nurse in a hospital in Westchester county (just north of the city), and they had to make impromptu Covid-19 ICUs out of various parts of the hospital, and that turns doctors and nurses who ordinarily did other things (such as surgeries) into ICU doctors and nurses.

NYC built more hospital capacity as a response to the dire situation in their hospitals. That some of that extra built capacity is unused is not evidence of overreaction. I also find it odd to separate out the availability of doctors and nurses from the physical beds when our primary question here is whether the hospitals are strained; a bed is of no use with doctors and nurses to help the patient.

I'm honestly curious: have you not read the news papers articles talking to doctors and nurses who have personally witnessed the over capacity hospitals in NYC and Chicago?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com