I'm starting to worry about the same thing. We may be chopping off our arm to stop a finger bleeding. Then again, if the blowback from mass infections really is as bad as predicted it could all still be worth it. The moral implications and the predicted numbers make the decision hard either way. We've never seen a completely saturated medical system before in the US so its hard to predict if the measures are worth it or not.

It seems like either option has terrible consequences down the road, either economic collapse or a health collapse due to a saturated healthcare system.

We are trying to prevent the crash of our health care system, which is undeveloped compared to most wealthy places.

I hope other hospitals are preparing as much as us. People as young as 80 are being denied triage and being left to die in Italy now. I know you are medically ignorant but that is undesirable and our severe response is to prevent that.

It is staggering there are still selfish idiots driving around like life is normal. People like us can just have it and spread it with no symptoms. Nationally we can't test for it. We suck.

This post was edited by Skinned on Mar 18 2020 10:54am

cars are deadlier, car travel is less preventable. and we make lots of efforts to stem death by car, DUI checkpoints, increased police patrols, limits on alcohol in your blood to drive, etc. the legal code surrounding cars is already a mile long, its already being combated at it's maximum level within reason.

so what are you suggesting? we dont do towards covid what we're already doing towards cars? we have an incredible level of control via the govt on car travel already, but it could be higher. it sounds like you're suggesting a hands off approach to covid, which is a really bad comparison to cars in any metric but deaths. u cant preach approach then only look at deaths, which dont take approach into account.

Not sure you followed what happened in Italy but they locked some small area more than a week before locking everything.
So we have a "view" on what will happen in a week or two.

This is wrong, your system is able to take much more people in intensive care, the ratio vs France is like 200% more people able to get intensive care.

On the other hand I'm not sure it's properly dispatched, geographically, and this problematic is even doubled if the poorest areas get the most cases.

People to die in their beds and their feces while a polished, bright, and empty [costly] ICU room is waiting is ... Hu i guess Americans are not animals ?

This post was edited by Saucisson6000 on Mar 18 2020 11:11am

bigly

We have 18 ICU beds in the county I practice in.

We make efforts to stem deaths from cars, we don't stop driving or shut down the economy and stay in our houses even though driving or being around cars is deadly.

My logic is simple, if we aren't shutting down the economy over that which i think we can agree is way more impactful on the aggregate then how does it make sense to do so over something that is 1/10 as damaging in net results?





Having a healthcare system that can service tens of millions more than expected capacity in times of peace is nonsensical and highly wasteful. 20-50 million people a year are injured from car accidents, tens of millions are injured as part of their jobs or whatever, many of them require going to the hospital, yet i'v never heard we need to increase our hospitals capacity because those numbers are staggering.

What exactly you think is the solution? Build tons of hospitals and have 2x healthcare workers but only have half of them working in non stress times?

cars last forever. even if we locked ourselves inside they'd still be there. cars dont have a possible vaccine for the death they cause coming. etc.

i agree, your logic is simple.

My dude, it's not the total number of cases that is the core issue. It's the total number of cases over X period of time. Our healthcare system is robust enough to tend to the needs of people injured in car accidents or on the job because they're spread out over time and not inundating our hospitals. Even the nature of their injuries will necessarily be different, so their need for medical technology will be spread out.

With covid-19 there's the potential that we'll have too many people needing care at the same time that our healthcare system won't be able to tend to everyone, particularly due to limitations on ventilators. This is what happened in Italy, as others have pointed out, in which they've had to triage people because the need for care outsizes their capacity.

Even using your example, where are people who get into car accidents supposed to go when the local hospitals are overwhelmed by covid-19 cases?