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> 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 wh
by 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 agoI 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 agoAgain, 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 agoflattening 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.