Has anyone done the math on how long a flattened curve stretches out if you flatten it enough to not overwhelm the medical system?
So for example, if we have 100,000 ICU beds in the US and we somehow make them all available for COVID-19 patients (unlikely), how flat do we need to make the curve to not go above 100k ICU patients, and how long will that flattened curve last? A month? Six months? Two years?
Assuming 70% of the adult population gets it, that's roughly 140 million infected. Assuming 5% need ICU beds, that's 7 million ICU patients. And assuming the average ICU stay is 2 weeks, we'd need to therefore spread our ICU patients over 140 weeks, or almost three years. Is that how long we can expect social distancing to last if things go perfectly?
When we saw the Chinese building hospitals in a couple of days, maybe we should have started building all around the world, slower. We had the time...
Also build respirators, train ppl.
Even now is better than later...
Yeah, just to be clear, I think there's no chance in the US either. I just saw something that said we actually only have 45k beds, and they're mostly already full anyway. Plus there's no chance we're going to be able to keep this clamped down for months. We'll be overwhelmed in weeks.
So for example, if we have 100,000 ICU beds in the US and we somehow make them all available for COVID-19 patients (unlikely), how flat do we need to make the curve to not go above 100k ICU patients, and how long will that flattened curve last? A month? Six months? Two years?
Assuming 70% of the adult population gets it, that's roughly 140 million infected. Assuming 5% need ICU beds, that's 7 million ICU patients. And assuming the average ICU stay is 2 weeks, we'd need to therefore spread our ICU patients over 140 weeks, or almost three years. Is that how long we can expect social distancing to last if things go perfectly?