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Comment by timeeater | Hacker News Reader

I have posted the official chart of ICU occupation in Germany. How can you argue with that? Covid patients are only a small fraction of the occupied beds.

In general it makes sense to use existing ICU beds at capacity (or slightly below), to, you know, make use of them.

Surely you could also still adjust by delaying surgical procedures that are not urgent, if things would get worse.

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You said it yourself, you want to run ICUs close to capacity, so you can't just add another 10% (or 27% like in Berlin right now) for COVID patients without calling it exceptional load. Procedures are already being delayed to free up extra capacity, and nurses are working overtime. The system is fairly close to collapse and we're lucky that the current measures stopped the growth of new infections, albeit at a very high level. We couldn't handle another doubling.

Only 20% of patients are in ICU because of Covid, so it is simply incorrect to claim that because of Covid the system is close to collapse. It is not. And if you call more than 80% use (which we don't even have) "exceptional load", it still isn't the same as "close to collapse". Have you even looked at the charts? If you count the emergency reserve, there is still capacity for 15000 more beds. A "doubling of cases" would put 4000 more people into ICU, so it wouldn't break the system at all. https://www.intensivregister.de/#/aktuelle-lage/zeitreihen

As for nurses working overtime, do you have any data for that? Quoting some individual hospital managers warning of "possible collapse" is not really evidence. They can also be politically motivated ("see, we really need more money for our ICU section"). You can also find individual hospital managers saying everything is fine.

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