3 ms·

The same thing occurs each season for influenza. We don't build hospitals to have excess capacity sitting around unused. https://www.bbc.com/news/health-42572

The same thing occurs each season for influenza. We don't build hospitals to have excess capacity sitting around unused. https://www.bbc.com/news/health-42572116 https://www.bbc.com/news/health-42572116 "Hospital bosses said they had run out of beds as they battle with "very high" rates of flu." Article from 2018. You can find the same articles from cities all around the world during regular yearly flu seasons.

rjtavares 5y ago
What you're saying is technically true, but it's incredibly misleading. COVID redefined what "running out of hospital beds" in western Europe means. So you can go on looking for articles before 2020, if you ask any professional in a hard hit area if Covid is "the same thing" as a bad season of Influenza they will tell you no. Here's an example: in 2019 Portugal had around 500 ICU beds in the public hospital network. In February 2021 there were 900 people in ICU in Portugal just for COVID.
- ArkanExplorer 5y ago
  Its not relevant to look at lockdown countries like Portugal and examine temporary ICU statistics, because it is too difficult to tease out the impacts of COVID vs the impact of lockdown. The point is - were lockdowns actually useful, or was it all just theatre? Given that Sweden and Ukraine have lower COVID deaths per capita than lockdown countries, it would suggest that lockdown worsened the situation: https://www.statista.com/statistics/1104709/coronavirus-deaths-worldwide-per-million-inhabitants/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/1104709/coronavirus-deat... Portugal pursued measures like limiting opening hours which seem to have no purpose apart from concentrating people into stores at the same time.
  - Angostura 5y ago
    > and examine temporary ICU statistics, because it is too difficult to tease out the impacts of COVID vs the impact of lockdown. It's actually quite easy. If you look at the outbreak in the UK that started in November, you can see cases and hospital admissions rising rapidly before lockdown is imposed. Then in February, you can see cases falling rapidly while lockdown is still imposed. The cases and hospitalisations are related to Covid - they don't map well onto lockdown. In fact excess deaths became negative for a while a the end of the spike, with lockdown still in effect.
  - iso1631 5y ago
    Deaths per million of Sweden and it's surrounding countries, from your page: Sweden 1,399.65 Denmark 431.21 Finland 170.64 Norway 146.23 > Given that Sweden and Ukraine have lower COVID deaths per capita than lockdown countries That's simply wrong, by your own data.
Angostura 5y ago
There's running out of beds, and then there is running out of ITU beds when you have already stopped elective treatments and converted a large proportion of your general wards to ITU

rjtavares 5y ago

What you're saying is technically true, but it's incredibly misleading. COVID redefined what "running out of hospital beds" in western Europe means. So you can go on looking for articles before 2020, if you ask any professional in a hard hit area if Covid is "the same thing" as a bad season of Influenza they will tell you no. Here's an example: in 2019 Portugal had around 500 ICU beds in the public hospital network. In February 2021 there were 900 people in ICU in Portugal just for COVID.

ArkanExplorer 5y ago
Its not relevant to look at lockdown countries like Portugal and examine temporary ICU statistics, because it is too difficult to tease out the impacts of COVID vs the impact of lockdown. The point is - were lockdowns actually useful, or was it all just theatre? Given that Sweden and Ukraine have lower COVID deaths per capita than lockdown countries, it would suggest that lockdown worsened the situation: https://www.statista.com/statistics/1104709/coronavirus-deaths-worldwide-per-million-inhabitants/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/1104709/coronavirus-deat... Portugal pursued measures like limiting opening hours which seem to have no purpose apart from concentrating people into stores at the same time.
- Angostura 5y ago
  > and examine temporary ICU statistics, because it is too difficult to tease out the impacts of COVID vs the impact of lockdown. It's actually quite easy. If you look at the outbreak in the UK that started in November, you can see cases and hospital admissions rising rapidly before lockdown is imposed. Then in February, you can see cases falling rapidly while lockdown is still imposed. The cases and hospitalisations are related to Covid - they don't map well onto lockdown. In fact excess deaths became negative for a while a the end of the spike, with lockdown still in effect.
- iso1631 5y ago
  Deaths per million of Sweden and it's surrounding countries, from your page: Sweden 1,399.65 Denmark 431.21 Finland 170.64 Norway 146.23 > Given that Sweden and Ukraine have lower COVID deaths per capita than lockdown countries That's simply wrong, by your own data.

Angostura 5y ago

There's running out of beds, and then there is running out of ITU beds when you have already stopped elective treatments and converted a large proportion of your general wards to ITU