3 ms·
Hospitals worldwide have very little spare capacity and even less spare ICU capacity. A normal hospital bed isn’t going to help much. They are very likely to be
by grey-area 7y ago
Hospitals worldwide have very little spare capacity and even less spare ICU capacity. A normal hospital bed isn’t going to help much. They are very likely to be overwhelmed, especially in countries that have not been able to delay initial spread due to lack of testing and containment.
This probably won’t kill millions (though it could worst case) but hospitals being overwhelmed would lead to an exponential rise in deaths, and many deaths from other causes as other treatments are abandoned. The situation is serious and will require significant measures to bring it under control, it is not yet being taken seriously enough in the US.
- dr_dshiv 7y agoAre ICUs even helpful against the disease? I wonder if any triage experiments are being run with randomization.
- lultimouomo 7y agoWhen you have ADRS ICU treatement is pretty much the only thing keeping you alive. "Randomized trial" in this context means russian roulette - if you don't get a ventilator you'll die almost certainly. Evidence [0] (partly based on COVID-19, parly on MERS) also says that NIV has a significantly worse outcome than ventilation. People are already getting NIV in some hospitals because they ran out of tubed ventilators. [0] https://www.who.int/docs/default-source/coronaviruse/clinical-management-of-novel-cov.pdf?sfvrsn=bc7da517_6&download=true https://www.who.int/docs/default-source/coronaviruse/clinica...