4 ms·
On the curve, hospital beds are basically flat compared to a covid spike. There is no rational amount of beds that is enough, because bed estimates are always a
by richardw 5y ago
On the curve, hospital beds are basically flat compared to a covid spike. There is no rational amount of beds that is enough, because bed estimates are always a guess: wrong and wasteful because too many and then suddenly too few. And then you need doctors and nurses. And the disease spikes in one area and then another. Do you ship beds around?
Easier to take personal responsibility than depend on the government or whoever is meant to parachute in all the beds and doctors to save us from our own misunderstanding of exponential growth curves.
- pas 5y agoYou ship patients around to big hospitals. Personal responsibility is fundamental, that's what makes the collective measures work efficiently. But there are simply things that are near impossible to do personally. Are you going to build a personal ICU for your family just in case? Are you going to train as an ICU nurse, a respiratory disease specialist, and are you also building a personal protective equipment factory for yourself too? Of course not. Though we need a bit of both. Depending on cheap just-in-time shit from China is great when you are dealing with a local flu outbreak in the local preschool, but not great in a pandemic. And the efficient solution is that everyone stocks up a few at home, and collectively we stock up a few billion in the country and then distribute it when and where needed instead of everyone trying to stock up thousands at home. (And so on for other aspects of protective measures.)