It's not just an ICU severely ill people need, but artificial respirators. I haven't seen numbers on how many the US has, but it may not be enough.
In addition, this illness has the potential to take a significant amount of medical personnel out of commission, either directly by making them sick or killing them, through attrition as they overwork themselves and collapse (we've been seen all of the above happen in China).
So even if you get in to an ICU you could still be screwed.
That said, the numbers coming out of China are just not trustworthy right now. We'll have to wait and see how bad it is outside of China (assuming enough people get tested and the tests actually work, neither of which are a certainty yet).
The complacency of ignorance on this really beggars belief.
This is completely implausible.
The idea that 1/6 cases are "critical" just doesn't align with this reality.
Using the reported death rates posted above, the odds of this happening are 1.3% * 1.3% * 8% * 8% = 1/924556. That's nearly 1 in a million. I concede that the medical system in Wuhan was overwhelmed, and these 5 patients did not have access to medical care.
[1] https://www.caixinglobal.com/2020-02-17/four-deaths-in-one-f...
The situation is horrible, but look at the hospital workers rate of infection vs mortality.
Even horrible things can still be made to look more horrible.
The virus has a ≈15% critical illness rate[1]. There are less than 100k ICU beds in the entire United States. They will very quickly be overwhelmed, exactly as they are in China, SK, Iran, Italy...the list is getting too long to keep up with. At that point the mortality rate approaches 15%. This is not the god damn flu and people who dismiss it as such are being hugely irresponsible.
1. I believe this article is referencing the published paper in Lancet that I was referring to https://coercioncode.com/2020/01/27/breaking-news-coronaviru...
Also bear in mind that the study is out of China, so it is most likely extremely conservative because the government has been publicly cracking down on anyone "spreading rumors" about the virus.
The peoples' collective, deliberate obviousness at this point is unbelievable.
Edit: wait a minute, I don't think I've even seen the paper I linked yet. This one reports 32% ICU admission rate and 15% death with lasting damage in recovered patients. Some 2 dozen Chinese authors to boot. Get your fucking heads out of the sand!
https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6...