Day 21-Three weeks

randy | April 2, 2020, 3:24 p.m.

Three weeks

Thursday, April 2nd, 2020

Well, yesterday wasn't funny. Today isn't either. I see we are on track for 1 Million cases and broke the 50K level for deaths. Anyone who belittled this outbreak back in early March should be eating their words by now.

I have been following 2 main charts over the past few weeks. John Hopkin's Chart and NY Times. Both have totals and trends that highlight the growth of cases (not as useful) and the number of fatalities.

Tracking fatalities gives us an idea of the real peak and when things might-not return to normal-but rather, be easier. The other really useful trend, in my opinion, is hospital remaining capacity. That is much harder to find. I get things are bad in a couple of NY hospitals but some of it is hyped up. Most hospitals around the country have seen an uptick in patients. In preparation for Corona, they have been going through their PPE, understandable. It seems to me that the current crisis is more the lack of PPE than ICU bed availability.

When hospital administrators report the number of beds still available, MOST hospitals still have space. That being said, the real crisis is still to come. It is obvious that we, as a nation, really didn't see this coming. Some people might have but I think most people just couldn't fathom this, except in movies.

In some ways, this is worse than Z-Nation or Contagion. COVID-19 is contagious but slow. It isn't like Ebola with bleed coming out of orifices. The symptoms are more like Flu, only slightly worse. The asymptomatic contagious nature is really frightful. Being sick but not know it; giving it to others before you are aware. That is what allowed this to sneak upon us.

In some ways, Covid19 has caused us to feel overwhelmed and underwhelmed at the same time. So, on the one hand, we hoard and overshop. On the other, 80% of those that get it won't really care or notice. So, we feel like we should just let it run its course, yet, the number of cases needing hospitalization causes us to take pause. Those 20% that need hospitalization have broken or will break the curve. That is to say, they will overwhelm the medical system. Each person that needs a bed usually needs that bed for 2-4 weeks. So, once that bed is occupied, the next person needs to find another or do with-out.

At the beginning of this, it was announced we had 950K beds and about 45K of those were ICU beds. ICU beds could be increased by about 100%, giving us 90K beds. Since we have over 200K CONFIRMED cases, we know that, while some places are overwhelmed, not everyone is. Here is where it gets complicated. The Bed Availability assumes all the beds were available. Most hospitals will tell you that was not the case, not by far.

So, now we are getting to the tipping point. Now, we are seeing more hospitals saying they are running out of beds, running out vents, running out of PPE, and running out of energy. Our efforts to flatten the curve failed. Partly, due to our leaders underwhelming understanding of the potential crisis and, partly due to a lack of Testing, Tracking, and Tracing