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Comment by phobosanomaly | Hacker News Reader

Arizona saw this early in the pandemic in cities along the California border like Lake Havasu.

They had zero mask restrictions for a while, and cases were low.

Then they opened restaurants and bars, which were flooded by thousands of Californians coming across the border every weekend and not taking any precautions and Arizona's ICUs quickly reached capacity.

https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2020-05-11/californ...

"While many locals are grateful for the tourism dollars amid a global downturn, some are worried that the crowds could cause a rise in coronavirus cases locally and overwhelm the city’s only hospital, which has just 16 ICU beds for its 55,000 residents."

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The article and the quote from the article you linked do not support your statement: "Arizona's ICUs quickly reached capacity".

The article is dated May 11.

https://translate.googleusercontent.com/translate_c?depth=1&...

2822 excess mortality for Denmark in its flu season of 2017/2018. Extrapolating Denmarks population to Swedens population we would expect 5000 excess mortality for a comparable bad flu season. Current Sweden COVID related deaths are 5800. Less than 16 deaths a day in Sweden since July 2. Less than 8 deaths a day since July 19.

Swedens COVID related deaths will not go above 6000. Seems to be a 0.06% mortality rate, heavily weighted towards the aged. 6000 deaths is still a lot, yes.

So, article was May 11 when the influx started.

This is June 25th.

"Fewer than 200 ICU beds available in Arizona as state reports more than 60,000 coronavirus cases."

https://www.abc15.com/news/state/fewer-than-200-icu-beds-ava...

This is July 3rd.

"State health officials say the capacity of hospital intensive care units is at an all-time high of 91%.

The number of people hospitalized Thursday due to a suspected or confirmed case of COVID-19 was 3,013, according to the Arizona Department of Health Services. It’s the first time reaching 3,000."

https://apnews.com/46a23bcf72b624dc25d7703dc269c727

That's a pretty scary timeline. Things got real serious real quick in less than a month.

Interesting, I agree the 91% of ICU capacity does seem alarming, but what aspect of that is hospitals optimizing for maximal usage of beds for financial reasons? I would want to see how much an ICU was used in previous years and how often it reached 90% capacity.

Also given it was 91% on July 3rd, I'd be interested in knowing what the situation was on August 3rd and September 3rd.

That's a great question.

I found this plot from Arizona Department of Public Health.'Hospital Bed Usage & Availability' sub-tab 'Number of Intensive Care Unit Available and In-use at Arizona Hospitals.'

https://azdhs.gov/preparedness/epidemiology-disease-control/...

Everything is reported in percentages, so I don't know how the absolute number of beds shifted as a result of temporary increases in ICU capacity.

Great graphs on that site, 57% of ICU in beds in use by COVID patients on 7/13 to 13% on 9/7. Seems like the peak has passed, but like you said it could be due to an increase in beds provided.

That's an article about a single tiny town. Not the entire state.

Sure, it's meant as an example of how large influxes of people into an area can potentially lead to superspreading-type events, and how common these are. That tiny town is an example of thousands of such places and events throughout the country.

Check out this graph from Arizona department of health 'Hospital COVID-like & Influenza-like illness Surveillance.'

https://www.azdhs.gov/preparedness/epidemiology-disease-cont...

Maybe it's spurious correlation, but I'd bet money the May 25th memorial day weekend had something to do with that big spike you see ramping up May 31. Memorial day also happened to feature thousands of people from another state flooding into Lake Havasu and other, similar cities without mask restrictions, and visiting bars, restaurants, etc.

Bear in mind, there were no mask restrictions in AZ before that peak.

Nobody has an RCT, so we're all just whiteboarding it to some extent.

> Maybe it's spurious correlation, but I'd bet money the May 25th memorial day weekend had something to do with that big spike you see ramping up May 31. Memorial day also happened to feature thousands of people from another state flooding into Lake Havasu and other, similar cities without mask restrictions, and visiting bars, restaurants, etc.

Maybe this is a spurious correlation too, but I'd bet money that the May 26th George Floyd protests had something to do with that big spike you see ramping up May 31 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Floyd_protests.

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