That’s less than one bed per million heads, country-wise. I think the militaries of many rich countries can do the same today, scaled for population (they will use containers, but that’s what was used for that Chinese hospital, too)

I also think many countries could do something similar (ignoring technical progress) in 1918, given they had had ample practice in world war 1.

Keyword: China.

Not many countries (any?) have the capability to build things as fast as China does.

And even if a country has them, China is the source of so many supplies that they will simply keep them for themselves.

Let this be a lesson to avoid dependencies on a single entity.

> that they will simply keep them for themselves

Not true, China has sent, and are continuing to do so, aid to, amongst others, Italy and Spain [1], including 100k respirators [2].

[1]: https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-spain-...

[2]: https://www.corriere.it/politica/20_marzo_10/coronavirus-mil...

It kinda simpler to do if you have all the manufacturing under your control(as west moved all production to china), and have construction companies used to such rapid development(building useless buildings for sole purpose of keeping people employed)

>> China was able to build a 645,000-square-foot medical facility in 10 days with 30 ICU units and 1000 beds. Coordinating such a feat in such a short time would not have been possible in 1918.

While its a great feat--and China is prob the only country that can do it--that's nothing if we get hundreds of millions infected with a virulent version. 30 ICU units might serve a town with 35000 people

Of course it was. We built battleships in weeks then.

Not quite. We built Liberty ships in extremely fast timeframes, but more substantial ships took far longer. The long lead time components could take a year or more.

Well the US is struggling just figuring out how to test for the disease on anything but the smallest of scales, so I doubt anything like that is replicable here.

well, the ICU units are the main problem here. I guess other countries would choose to upgrade existing rooms here. And a 1000 beds in rooms with drywall separation - we did this in Germany for the refugees and (maybe contrary to China) we have a relative abundance of existing superstructures (communal gyms, old military sites)...

We also have tons of old, maybe obsolete I don't knw, military and emergency stuff sitting in warehouses for things like that from the cold war. My impression is that all measures currently being taken are there make sure we don't need to go to these extremes.