Wait and see, the only thing which will actually overwhelm resources will be panic.TexasScientist said:This has the potential to overwhelm the capacity of our hospitals to deal with this and the other normal day in day out illness and trauma they are presented. Italy is overwhelmed.Oldbear83 said:More drama. You should write for the soap operas, Sam.Sam Lowry said:250 is a number, not an emotion. It won't be my child this time, but it will be someone else's.Oldbear83 said:Oh good hypothetical anecdotes based on emotion.Sam Lowry said:That doesn't help the severe stroke victim who can't get an ICU bed. Or for another example, I had a child on ECMO a few years ago. There are only about 250 of those machines in the country. If they're all occupied, my kid dies whether he has the virus or not. And while the mortality rate is relatively low compared to some of the worst viruses, it's still much higher than we're accustomed to. We're doing the right thing shutting down as much as we can. Actually we should be doing more.ATL Bear said:
Isn't the human body the most effective fighter of viruses like this? I know some bodies do it better than others (older vs younger, compromised immune systems, etc.), but given the symptoms and mortality rate of this virus, do we really need to be as frightened as we are? And we'll eventually have a vaccine that will work as poorly as the flu vaccines today do.
I'm not saying there's no reason for concern, but are some of these extreme measures really that necessary?
Always the best way to make policy.
Look, we have been through worse outbreaks before. H1N1 killed over a thousand Americans before President Obama even called an emergency, and we got through that. SARS and MERS are much more deadly than COVID-19, but we got through those too.
I am not dismissing the danger at all, but at the same time it's important not to over-react or feed panic, which is what is happening now.
That which does not kill me, will try again and get nastier