Re:California governor issues statewide 'stay at home' order
by twblalock on Friday March 20, 2020 @10:52AM
(#22637965)
What if the flatter curve is still above the dotted line that represents hospital capacity? Would shutting down most of the economy still be worth it?
That “flatten the curve” graph people are sharing is just a visual aid. It’s not based on real data. How could it be? Hospital capacity varies by region but everyone in the country is passing around the same graph.
It’s nice to flatten the curve, but if the flattened curve isn’t low enough then we will overload our health care system anyway, and we will add an economic shutdown on top of that.
Re:California governor issues statewide 'stay at home' order
by sxv on Friday March 20, 2020 @11:07AM
(#22638098)
Flattening the curve is not all-or-nothing as you imply. If we marginally exceed hospital capacity (in a given area) we will have a small number of people who cannot get the treatment they need. At that point every additional patient is another victim of too steep a curve.
If we don’t, what happens to the rather large percentage of young people who require hospitalization? It’s no stretch to assume that many would die. Let alone the fact that mortality for young people is already many times higher than the flu. Break the healthcare system and that goes up dramatically.
On top of that, break the healthcare system and what happens to all the normal, baseline, hospitalization needs? They’re not going to suddenly disappear. Survivable medical events become fatal.
How do you recover as a society from that, without an economic depression like none we’ve seen in our lifetime?
We desperately want to prevent an economic depression, and for good reason! But the chessboard is what it is. We don’t have a whole lot of moves.