7 ms·

Only 1 in 200,000 children in the US were hospitalized with covid in the week ending July 31st: https://gis.cdc.gov/grasp/covidnet/covid19_3.html https://gis.c

Only 1 in 200,000 children in the US were hospitalized with covid in the week ending July 31st: https://gis.cdc.gov/grasp/covidnet/covid19_3.html https://gis.cdc.gov/grasp/covidnet/covid19_3.html The real contagion is this fear. And the cause is the news media replacing Trump with covid as their ratings booster. Glenn Greenwald has documented how major corporate news media saw ratings plummet after Trump left office: https://twitter.com/ggreenwald/status/1404784933030223874?s=20 https://twitter.com/ggreenwald/status/1404784933030223874?s=...

jasonlaramburu 5y ago
You obviously don’t have young kids.
- fullmoon 5y ago
  I have young kids and see nothing wrong with the posting. Bad outcomes from Covid in kids are extraordinarily rare.
  - jasonlaramburu 5y ago
    It seems like bad outcomes in kids from Delta are more common than in alpha. Why take any additional risk? The downside of masking in schools, vaccinating staff and spacing out desks is zero.
    - taeric 5y ago
      Genuine questions. Is it more common because of the virus? Or coincides with rises in sickness from many reintegrating for the first time in about a year? That is, my prior would be that as schools reopen for the first time in a while, there will be a spike in sicknesses. If you ever had kids in daycare, you probably saw the sickest were the new kids. First exposures.
      - CryptoPunk 5y ago
        An immunity debt is a real thing: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/jul/08/new-zealand-children-falling-ill-in-high-numbers-due-to-covid-immunity-debt https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/jul/08/new-zealand-ch...
        taeric 5y ago
        Right, but I don't want to dismiss current rises in sickness due to that inappropriately. So my question is had this been qualified?
        fullmoon 5y ago
        RSV is surging right now in the south. https://www.cdc.gov/surveillance/nrevss/rsv/region.html#south https://www.cdc.gov/surveillance/nrevss/rsv/region.html#sout...
        taeric 5y ago
        I don't know enough of national school openings to know what to make of this. I do know all of my southern friends and family have just sent their kids back to school. Up here in the PNW, we have had kid's camps start up. Big feeling that these are going to shut down real quick, though.
      - jasonlaramburu 5y ago
        My point is that we have evidence-based strategies to reduce transmission in schools that have virtually no documented downsides: kn94 masks, ventilation, desk spacing, shots for staff.
        taeric 5y ago
        For some of the ages we are talking about... I'd be surprised if those measures do anything. Speaking as a parent of kids under six. Many of them literally suck on the masks they are wearing... Edit: though, big plus one on the shots for staff. I take that as a given.
    - CryptoPunk 5y ago
      The risks from Delta are negligible for children. Masking almost certainly stunts social development, by interfering with the use of non-verbal communication cues like facial expressions, etc. EDIT: responding to below as I'm rate-limited >>Do you have any actual evidence that this is true in school-age children (ages 5+)? Yes, I've already provided the evidence. There was only one hospitalization with a positive covid result in 200,000 children aged 5 - 17 in the US in the week ending July 31st. The CDC page is linked above. The Delta variant was the predominant variant in the US in that period, so this definitively rules it out as a significant danger to children. You can also look at the Delta variant data from England: https://www.cnbc.com/amp/2021/06/29/who-is-most-at-risk-from-the-delta-variant.html https://www.cnbc.com/amp/2021/06/29/who-is-most-at-risk-from... >>Nonetheless, the data showed that there have been 117 deaths among people in England who had the delta variant with the majority being in the over-50 age group. >>There have been eight fatalities among the under-50s with six of them in unvaccinated individuals and the other two in people who had received one dose. I'd venture to guess that in the time period under study, there were ZERO covid delta variant deaths amongst children in the entirety of England. This would be funny if the destruction caused by this over-reaction wasn't so sad. EDIT 2: >>I asked for data to support your claim that masks stunt social development in school age (5+) children. I don't have any data as we've never had a case of a large cross-section of children being masked for extended periods of their day, so no cause to study its effects. The burden of proof that it's safe is therefore on those advocating this untested policy. Just common sense tells us masking will interfere with communication. Even doctors who are masked are perceived as less empathatic: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3879648/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3879648/ Beyond communication, masking interferes with heat dissipation, as it's at least one layer of insulating material on a highly exothermic part of the body. Subjecting almost all children to this for over a year is a massive over-reaction considering the actual risks posed by covid to children. EDIT 3: >>> I don't have any data >>Thanks for clearing that up. This is a bad faith response that ignores extremely important context and criticism of your masking advocacy. What this and your other response show, is you don't want to take responsibility for the fact that the burden of proof is on you, to show that masking to this extent does not harm children's development. EDIT 4: >>dissipation? Social stigma? WTF? Not a direct response to me from u/Steltek, but criticizing me to someone else, so I think I'm warranted in responding. I never said anything about "social stigma". I said it would interfere with the development of communication skills, because it obstructs non-verbal communication cues like facial expressions. And heat dissipitation is nothing to scoff at, given how much biological evolution has gone toward optimizing bodies to dissipitate heat efficiently, and the damage heat can do to biological organisms. Any policy that impacts tens of millions of children deserves better than this knee-jerk "anti-masker" prejudice and petty partisanship.
    - fullmoon 5y ago
      The downside isn’t zero, as we can see right now: NPIs in children -> immune deficit for other common viruses -> off-season surge -> PICU capacity issues concurrent to a Covid-19 surge.
  - croes 5y ago
    The problem is that there are far less ICUs for kids tham for adults so you don't need many cases to block them all.
  - toss1 5y ago
    Because you aren't looking, or at least at results from the Delta variant [1,2], or at the issues related to Long Covid [3], or the intelligence loss from COVID-19[4]. (And these are just a micro-sample of the evidence.) If you underestimate this pandemic, you are a fool. If you advocate others to underestimate this, you are a menace. [1] https://thehill.com/homenews/state-watch/562890-seven-mississippi-children-hospitalized-as-delta-variant-surges-two-on https://thehill.com/homenews/state-watch/562890-seven-missis... [2] https://www.wdsu.com/article/more-than-3000-louisiana-children-test-positive-for-covid-19-in-just-four-days/37246194 https://www.wdsu.com/article/more-than-3000-louisiana-childr... [3] https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-021-01935-7?mc_source=MTEyNjQxNzM4NjMzNDg2MjM3NzEwOjo6ZTU2NTZmYzEzYjBhNDczZWIxMGJhZDU5NzQxMjljNGQ6OnY0OjoxNjI3OTYyMDYwOjox https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-021-01935-7?mc_source... [4] https://www.webmd.com/lung/news/20210730/study-finds-covid-19-may-lower-intelligence https://www.webmd.com/lung/news/20210730/study-finds-covid-1...
    - fullmoon 5y ago
      > If you underestimate this pandemic, you are a fool. I don’t, but fortunately, it’s just a little factor for children. > If you advocate others to underestimate this, you are a menace. If you advocate for interventions that harm children, which are barely affected, you are a menace. Your 1 and 2 just point towards Delta being the most dominant variant, which surprises no one. [1] https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/fullarticle/2782164 https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/fullarticle/2782164 Long Covid in kids. No significant difference between seronegative and seropositive children. [2] https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.05.11.21257037v1 https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.05.11.21257037v... Long Covid in kids. Simular conclusion. The paper poses the question: “suggests that Long-COVID19 might be less common than previously thought and emphasizing the impact of pandemic-associated symptoms regarding the well-being and mental health of young adolescents.”. [3] https://ccforum.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s13054-019-2546-y https://ccforum.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s13054-01... Invasive ventilation by itself leads to neurological symptoms.
- ergot_vacation 5y ago
  This is exactly the kind of fear-mongering that's being derided. Assuming OP's stat is correct, a given child has a considerably higher chance of dying from cancer, injuries, or even suicide than covid. It's the fear of terrorism after 9/11 all over again. (These are per 100,000, so 2x them: https://cutt.ly/vQJHgGm https://cutt.ly/vQJHgGm)
  - jasonlaramburu 5y ago
    OP’s data is misleading. The Delta outbreak is moving through states individually, not in a uniform fashion across the country. You have to look at states with active outbreaks, not the nationwide data. Pediatric ICUs are at or near capacity in Texas. Schools in Georgia that have opened already with no interventions are closing within days due to outbreaks. Whether or not catching covid is ‘bad’ for kids this kind of disruption in essential services undoubtedly is. It’s impossible to have a data-driven discussion when the default response is ‘you’re just overreacting.’
- CryptoPunk 5y ago
  Having young children shouldn't make you overlook evidence and latch on to any sensationalized account given by the news media.
  - jasonlaramburu 5y ago
    It does make one more cautious. And to be clear, you have not provided evidence of anything.
    - CryptoPunk 5y ago
      The very first sentence of my very first comment was: Only 1 in 200,000 children in the US were hospitalized with covid in the week ending July 31st: https://gis.cdc.gov/grasp/covidnet/covid19_3.html https://gis.cdc.gov/grasp/covidnet/covid19_3.html
      - jasonlaramburu 5y ago
        As I’ve said multiple times in this thread, looking at nationwide data for the US is misleading. The US is really a collection of small countries (states) each with its own distinct public health policies and cultures. Vaccination rates in adults vary widely between states. You need to look at states like Mississippi which is currently in the grip of an epidemic and has low vaccination rates.
        CryptoPunk 5y ago
        It's not misleading. This is just you looking for excuses to dismiss evidence that debunks your position. We can get strong indications about the danger a variant poses to each age group from looking at national data, notwithstanding individual states having "distinct public health policies and cultures". The variance in public health policy/culture and vaccination rates across states does not make national data meaningless. When a particular variant of a virus has massively proliferated across the US, and caused very few deaths in children, a reasonable observer concludes the risks it poses to children is slight. You're picking individual states, and then making inflammatory insinuations about the significance of the most alarming statistic you can find about them, while insisting that national data not be taken into account. This is just bad science, focused on reaching a desired conclusion. What non-cherry-picked data shows is that the delta variant was the dominant variant in the US during the week ending July 31st, when there was only 250 covid positive testing children hospitalized in the entire US. The data from England also shows that the risk delta poses to children is extremely low. Idiosyncracies of England's public health policy and culture cannot make such a huge impact on covid survivability that it's going to turn a virus that is dangerous to children into one that causes zero or close to zero deaths nation-wide. Remember that across all of these jurisdictions, almost all children are unvaccinated, and vaccination status is the only health-care-mediated factor that could conceivably make a huge impact on survivability.
croes 5y ago
You don't need to die from COVID it's enough if you have an severe accident and all ICUs are already in use.
- CryptoPunk 5y ago
  Please see my edit. There were only 250 hospitalizations of children testing positive for covid (it's also possible not all were hospitalized due to covid since covid testing is standard) in the US in the week ending July 31st.
  - nojito 5y ago
    Just how many PICU beds do you think exist in the surge states?
    - CryptoPunk 5y ago
      There are eight PICU beds per 100,000 children in the US. That is 5-6,000 PICU beds in total: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/31162205/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/31162205/ I don't know the breakdown among states, but given the number of beds is at least 20X greater than the number of covid hospitalizations across the US, I don't imagine the situation will ever be that dire in a significant number of states. Also fullmoon provided evidence that suggests the shortage of PICU beds in Texas is mostly due to the immunity debt [1] being paid, and RSV spreading, with the lifting of covid containment policies: https://www.wfaa.com/mobile/article/news/local/unusual-rsv-summer-surge-continues-in-north-texas-as-pediatric-icu-beds-dwindle-in-covid-surge/287-e353eaa1-4181-4a53-9c60-039425965453 https://www.wfaa.com/mobile/article/news/local/unusual-rsv-s... [1] https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/jul/08/new-zealand-children-falling-ill-in-high-numbers-due-to-covid-immunity-debt https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/jul/08/new-zealand-ch...
mannykannot 5y ago
> The real contagion is this fear. It is not fear that is filling up the available ICU beds, it is an avoidable surge in an actual disease.
- fullmoon 5y ago
  But the diseas isn’t Covid, but RSV. - https://eu.oklahoman.com/story/news/2021/07/30/oklahoma-childrens-hospital-few-pediatric-beds-available-amid-rsv-surge/5421533001/ https://eu.oklahoman.com/story/news/2021/07/30/oklahoma-chil... - https://www.cdc.gov/surveillance/nrevss/rsv/region.html#south https://www.cdc.gov/surveillance/nrevss/rsv/region.html#sout...
  - cameldrv 5y ago
    Looking at that data, RSV looks to me like a normal yearly peak, albeit earlier than usual. COVID is over 100x more cases.
  - mannykannot 5y ago
    I am not sure what point you are trying to make here - are you in agreement with CryptoPunk that fear is the real problem, as if the shortage of ICU beds was like a run on toilet paper? As cameldrv points out, an increase in RSV of this magnitude is normally well-handled, only the timing is different. As both the original article and the one you link to make clear, the problem at this time is staffing, and the staffing problem is being driven by Covid.
    - CryptoPunk 5y ago
      I'm not quite sure why you don't understand his point. He's arguing that the shortage of beds is due to a spike in RSV hospitalizations, not covid hospitalizations. You can dispute that claim but it's not clear why you are unsure what his argument is.
      - hiyer 5y ago
        IIUC what s/he's saying is that there's not a shortage of beds per se but staffed beds. And the staffing shortage is because a lot of staff has been diverted to covid cases.

jasonlaramburu 5y ago

You obviously don’t have young kids.

fullmoon 5y ago
I have young kids and see nothing wrong with the posting. Bad outcomes from Covid in kids are extraordinarily rare.
- jasonlaramburu 5y ago
  It seems like bad outcomes in kids from Delta are more common than in alpha. Why take any additional risk? The downside of masking in schools, vaccinating staff and spacing out desks is zero.
  - taeric 5y ago
    Genuine questions. Is it more common because of the virus? Or coincides with rises in sickness from many reintegrating for the first time in about a year? That is, my prior would be that as schools reopen for the first time in a while, there will be a spike in sicknesses. If you ever had kids in daycare, you probably saw the sickest were the new kids. First exposures.
    - CryptoPunk 5y ago
      An immunity debt is a real thing: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/jul/08/new-zealand-children-falling-ill-in-high-numbers-due-to-covid-immunity-debt https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/jul/08/new-zealand-ch...
      - taeric 5y ago
        Right, but I don't want to dismiss current rises in sickness due to that inappropriately. So my question is had this been qualified?
        fullmoon 5y ago
        RSV is surging right now in the south. https://www.cdc.gov/surveillance/nrevss/rsv/region.html#south https://www.cdc.gov/surveillance/nrevss/rsv/region.html#sout...
        taeric 5y ago
        I don't know enough of national school openings to know what to make of this. I do know all of my southern friends and family have just sent their kids back to school. Up here in the PNW, we have had kid's camps start up. Big feeling that these are going to shut down real quick, though.
    - jasonlaramburu 5y ago
      My point is that we have evidence-based strategies to reduce transmission in schools that have virtually no documented downsides: kn94 masks, ventilation, desk spacing, shots for staff.
      - taeric 5y ago
        For some of the ages we are talking about... I'd be surprised if those measures do anything. Speaking as a parent of kids under six. Many of them literally suck on the masks they are wearing... Edit: though, big plus one on the shots for staff. I take that as a given.
  - CryptoPunk 5y ago
    The risks from Delta are negligible for children. Masking almost certainly stunts social development, by interfering with the use of non-verbal communication cues like facial expressions, etc. EDIT: responding to below as I'm rate-limited >>Do you have any actual evidence that this is true in school-age children (ages 5+)? Yes, I've already provided the evidence. There was only one hospitalization with a positive covid result in 200,000 children aged 5 - 17 in the US in the week ending July 31st. The CDC page is linked above. The Delta variant was the predominant variant in the US in that period, so this definitively rules it out as a significant danger to children. You can also look at the Delta variant data from England: https://www.cnbc.com/amp/2021/06/29/who-is-most-at-risk-from-the-delta-variant.html https://www.cnbc.com/amp/2021/06/29/who-is-most-at-risk-from... >>Nonetheless, the data showed that there have been 117 deaths among people in England who had the delta variant with the majority being in the over-50 age group. >>There have been eight fatalities among the under-50s with six of them in unvaccinated individuals and the other two in people who had received one dose. I'd venture to guess that in the time period under study, there were ZERO covid delta variant deaths amongst children in the entirety of England. This would be funny if the destruction caused by this over-reaction wasn't so sad. EDIT 2: >>I asked for data to support your claim that masks stunt social development in school age (5+) children. I don't have any data as we've never had a case of a large cross-section of children being masked for extended periods of their day, so no cause to study its effects. The burden of proof that it's safe is therefore on those advocating this untested policy. Just common sense tells us masking will interfere with communication. Even doctors who are masked are perceived as less empathatic: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3879648/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3879648/ Beyond communication, masking interferes with heat dissipation, as it's at least one layer of insulating material on a highly exothermic part of the body. Subjecting almost all children to this for over a year is a massive over-reaction considering the actual risks posed by covid to children. EDIT 3: >>> I don't have any data >>Thanks for clearing that up. This is a bad faith response that ignores extremely important context and criticism of your masking advocacy. What this and your other response show, is you don't want to take responsibility for the fact that the burden of proof is on you, to show that masking to this extent does not harm children's development. EDIT 4: >>dissipation? Social stigma? WTF? Not a direct response to me from u/Steltek, but criticizing me to someone else, so I think I'm warranted in responding. I never said anything about "social stigma". I said it would interfere with the development of communication skills, because it obstructs non-verbal communication cues like facial expressions. And heat dissipitation is nothing to scoff at, given how much biological evolution has gone toward optimizing bodies to dissipitate heat efficiently, and the damage heat can do to biological organisms. Any policy that impacts tens of millions of children deserves better than this knee-jerk "anti-masker" prejudice and petty partisanship.
  - fullmoon 5y ago
    The downside isn’t zero, as we can see right now: NPIs in children -> immune deficit for other common viruses -> off-season surge -> PICU capacity issues concurrent to a Covid-19 surge.
- croes 5y ago
  The problem is that there are far less ICUs for kids tham for adults so you don't need many cases to block them all.
- toss1 5y ago
  Because you aren't looking, or at least at results from the Delta variant [1,2], or at the issues related to Long Covid [3], or the intelligence loss from COVID-19[4]. (And these are just a micro-sample of the evidence.) If you underestimate this pandemic, you are a fool. If you advocate others to underestimate this, you are a menace. [1] https://thehill.com/homenews/state-watch/562890-seven-mississippi-children-hospitalized-as-delta-variant-surges-two-on https://thehill.com/homenews/state-watch/562890-seven-missis... [2] https://www.wdsu.com/article/more-than-3000-louisiana-children-test-positive-for-covid-19-in-just-four-days/37246194 https://www.wdsu.com/article/more-than-3000-louisiana-childr... [3] https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-021-01935-7?mc_source=MTEyNjQxNzM4NjMzNDg2MjM3NzEwOjo6ZTU2NTZmYzEzYjBhNDczZWIxMGJhZDU5NzQxMjljNGQ6OnY0OjoxNjI3OTYyMDYwOjox https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-021-01935-7?mc_source... [4] https://www.webmd.com/lung/news/20210730/study-finds-covid-19-may-lower-intelligence https://www.webmd.com/lung/news/20210730/study-finds-covid-1...
  - fullmoon 5y ago
    > If you underestimate this pandemic, you are a fool. I don’t, but fortunately, it’s just a little factor for children. > If you advocate others to underestimate this, you are a menace. If you advocate for interventions that harm children, which are barely affected, you are a menace. Your 1 and 2 just point towards Delta being the most dominant variant, which surprises no one. [1] https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/fullarticle/2782164 https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/fullarticle/2782164 Long Covid in kids. No significant difference between seronegative and seropositive children. [2] https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.05.11.21257037v1 https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.05.11.21257037v... Long Covid in kids. Simular conclusion. The paper poses the question: “suggests that Long-COVID19 might be less common than previously thought and emphasizing the impact of pandemic-associated symptoms regarding the well-being and mental health of young adolescents.”. [3] https://ccforum.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s13054-019-2546-y https://ccforum.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s13054-01... Invasive ventilation by itself leads to neurological symptoms.
ergot_vacation 5y ago
This is exactly the kind of fear-mongering that's being derided. Assuming OP's stat is correct, a given child has a considerably higher chance of dying from cancer, injuries, or even suicide than covid. It's the fear of terrorism after 9/11 all over again. (These are per 100,000, so 2x them: https://cutt.ly/vQJHgGm https://cutt.ly/vQJHgGm)
- jasonlaramburu 5y ago
  OP’s data is misleading. The Delta outbreak is moving through states individually, not in a uniform fashion across the country. You have to look at states with active outbreaks, not the nationwide data. Pediatric ICUs are at or near capacity in Texas. Schools in Georgia that have opened already with no interventions are closing within days due to outbreaks. Whether or not catching covid is ‘bad’ for kids this kind of disruption in essential services undoubtedly is. It’s impossible to have a data-driven discussion when the default response is ‘you’re just overreacting.’
CryptoPunk 5y ago
Having young children shouldn't make you overlook evidence and latch on to any sensationalized account given by the news media.
- jasonlaramburu 5y ago
  It does make one more cautious. And to be clear, you have not provided evidence of anything.
  - CryptoPunk 5y ago
    The very first sentence of my very first comment was: Only 1 in 200,000 children in the US were hospitalized with covid in the week ending July 31st: https://gis.cdc.gov/grasp/covidnet/covid19_3.html https://gis.cdc.gov/grasp/covidnet/covid19_3.html
    - jasonlaramburu 5y ago
      As I’ve said multiple times in this thread, looking at nationwide data for the US is misleading. The US is really a collection of small countries (states) each with its own distinct public health policies and cultures. Vaccination rates in adults vary widely between states. You need to look at states like Mississippi which is currently in the grip of an epidemic and has low vaccination rates.
      - CryptoPunk 5y ago
        It's not misleading. This is just you looking for excuses to dismiss evidence that debunks your position. We can get strong indications about the danger a variant poses to each age group from looking at national data, notwithstanding individual states having "distinct public health policies and cultures". The variance in public health policy/culture and vaccination rates across states does not make national data meaningless. When a particular variant of a virus has massively proliferated across the US, and caused very few deaths in children, a reasonable observer concludes the risks it poses to children is slight. You're picking individual states, and then making inflammatory insinuations about the significance of the most alarming statistic you can find about them, while insisting that national data not be taken into account. This is just bad science, focused on reaching a desired conclusion. What non-cherry-picked data shows is that the delta variant was the dominant variant in the US during the week ending July 31st, when there was only 250 covid positive testing children hospitalized in the entire US. The data from England also shows that the risk delta poses to children is extremely low. Idiosyncracies of England's public health policy and culture cannot make such a huge impact on covid survivability that it's going to turn a virus that is dangerous to children into one that causes zero or close to zero deaths nation-wide. Remember that across all of these jurisdictions, almost all children are unvaccinated, and vaccination status is the only health-care-mediated factor that could conceivably make a huge impact on survivability.

croes 5y ago

You don't need to die from COVID it's enough if you have an severe accident and all ICUs are already in use.

CryptoPunk 5y ago
Please see my edit. There were only 250 hospitalizations of children testing positive for covid (it's also possible not all were hospitalized due to covid since covid testing is standard) in the US in the week ending July 31st.
- nojito 5y ago
  Just how many PICU beds do you think exist in the surge states?
  - CryptoPunk 5y ago
    There are eight PICU beds per 100,000 children in the US. That is 5-6,000 PICU beds in total: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/31162205/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/31162205/ I don't know the breakdown among states, but given the number of beds is at least 20X greater than the number of covid hospitalizations across the US, I don't imagine the situation will ever be that dire in a significant number of states. Also fullmoon provided evidence that suggests the shortage of PICU beds in Texas is mostly due to the immunity debt [1] being paid, and RSV spreading, with the lifting of covid containment policies: https://www.wfaa.com/mobile/article/news/local/unusual-rsv-summer-surge-continues-in-north-texas-as-pediatric-icu-beds-dwindle-in-covid-surge/287-e353eaa1-4181-4a53-9c60-039425965453 https://www.wfaa.com/mobile/article/news/local/unusual-rsv-s... [1] https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/jul/08/new-zealand-children-falling-ill-in-high-numbers-due-to-covid-immunity-debt https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/jul/08/new-zealand-ch...

mannykannot 5y ago

> The real contagion is this fear. It is not fear that is filling up the available ICU beds, it is an avoidable surge in an actual disease.

fullmoon 5y ago
But the diseas isn’t Covid, but RSV. - https://eu.oklahoman.com/story/news/2021/07/30/oklahoma-childrens-hospital-few-pediatric-beds-available-amid-rsv-surge/5421533001/ https://eu.oklahoman.com/story/news/2021/07/30/oklahoma-chil... - https://www.cdc.gov/surveillance/nrevss/rsv/region.html#south https://www.cdc.gov/surveillance/nrevss/rsv/region.html#sout...
- cameldrv 5y ago
  Looking at that data, RSV looks to me like a normal yearly peak, albeit earlier than usual. COVID is over 100x more cases.
- mannykannot 5y ago
  I am not sure what point you are trying to make here - are you in agreement with CryptoPunk that fear is the real problem, as if the shortage of ICU beds was like a run on toilet paper? As cameldrv points out, an increase in RSV of this magnitude is normally well-handled, only the timing is different. As both the original article and the one you link to make clear, the problem at this time is staffing, and the staffing problem is being driven by Covid.
  - CryptoPunk 5y ago
    I'm not quite sure why you don't understand his point. He's arguing that the shortage of beds is due to a spike in RSV hospitalizations, not covid hospitalizations. You can dispute that claim but it's not clear why you are unsure what his argument is.
    - hiyer 5y ago
      IIUC what s/he's saying is that there's not a shortage of beds per se but staffed beds. And the staffing shortage is because a lot of staff has been diverted to covid cases.