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I believe that nobody really expects to meet the gap between actual capacity and "required" capacity, i.e. that it can't and won't get met - nonetheless, raisin

I believe that nobody really expects to meet the gap between actual capacity and "required" capacity, i.e. that it can't and won't get met - nonetheless, raising the capacity to save lives will save more lives; even if it's not sufficient. It's worth noting that every early "flatten the curve" illustration example that I saw had the lower curve still above the capacity, just not nearly as much, however by the time it reached mass media, it had somehow morphed to the lower curve at or below capacity... probably because they thought it sells the idea better? but at the cost of misleading the public about what's feasible.

dunkelheit 7y ago
> I believe that nobody really expects to meet the gap between actual capacity and "required" capacity Well, that's exactly my problem - I don't really know what kind of gap to expect. It is all very qualitative at this point but scenarios (and thus the best course of action) are wildly different depending on how exactly do the relevant quantities compare to each other. Of course "we don't know yet" is a perfectly valid answer but then it must be clearly stated in the article that this is just a speculation describing a plausible scenario.
- PeterisP 7y ago
  I read some articles that did the math on that, but I can't easily find them now. IIRC it was an order of magnitude difference - i.e. flattening the curve enough to meet capacity would require to stretch it out to something 10 years (certainly an unreasonable goal), so flattening it out over a single year would be something like 10 times over the current capacity. It's hard to estimate how much reasonable actions can increase capacity - 20%? 50%? 100%? But nowhere close to 10x increase.
  - kazagistar 7y ago
    Again, irrelevant. Capacity increase is lives saved. Flattening the curve is a multiplier on that, and is thus also lives saved. "Enough" doesn't matter as much as the fact that "more" scales linearly. Every bed of capacity you add is at least one life saved, even if you never get close to enough.
  - jopsen 7y ago
    flattening the curve also gives us more time to come up with a vaccine. If we're talking about high casualty numbers, stretching it a year or two, while we wait for a vaccine _might_ be feasible.

dunkelheit 7y ago

> I believe that nobody really expects to meet the gap between actual capacity and "required" capacity Well, that's exactly my problem - I don't really know what kind of gap to expect. It is all very qualitative at this point but scenarios (and thus the best course of action) are wildly different depending on how exactly do the relevant quantities compare to each other. Of course "we don't know yet" is a perfectly valid answer but then it must be clearly stated in the article that this is just a speculation describing a plausible scenario.

PeterisP 7y ago
I read some articles that did the math on that, but I can't easily find them now. IIRC it was an order of magnitude difference - i.e. flattening the curve enough to meet capacity would require to stretch it out to something 10 years (certainly an unreasonable goal), so flattening it out over a single year would be something like 10 times over the current capacity. It's hard to estimate how much reasonable actions can increase capacity - 20%? 50%? 100%? But nowhere close to 10x increase.
- kazagistar 7y ago
  Again, irrelevant. Capacity increase is lives saved. Flattening the curve is a multiplier on that, and is thus also lives saved. "Enough" doesn't matter as much as the fact that "more" scales linearly. Every bed of capacity you add is at least one life saved, even if you never get close to enough.
- jopsen 7y ago
  flattening the curve also gives us more time to come up with a vaccine. If we're talking about high casualty numbers, stretching it a year or two, while we wait for a vaccine _might_ be feasible.