> The lives being saved by flattening are not limited to covid-19 patients requiring intubation.

It's not even about just saving lives if the thing I saw recently about the effects of COVID-19 on survivors is accurate - diminished lung capacity, impaired liver function, possible cardiac issues, possible neurological issues, blood clots that may lead to strokes later, etc.

Currently 750k survivors - health systems could possibly be looking at a generation or more of strain coping with them.

Or we can flatten the curve and reduce the number of infections and thence the number of infected survivors.

I think what you mention is completely stopping infections, which is certainly a great goal - albeit a very costly one for many countries which started the right actions too late, too little.

Flattening the curve is only about spreading the same number of infections over time, so that at a given time, the health system is not overwhelmed. It will not reduce the number of infections, and will likely augment the number of survivors, who might have to deal with hard long term consequences.

It will most definitely reduce the number of infections. It allows us to reach the point of where measures like test-and-trace become possible after a smaller number of infections, and those measures can further suppress and even eradicate the disease before it manages to infect everyone.

Testing and tracing would have been a great idea in February when the outbreak could still be contained. Now it's gone too far for that to be practical. So we're likely to end up with ~70% infected eventually (approximate herd immunity limit), it's just a question of when.

That is the whole point of lockdowns, to bring the outbreak down enough that these methods are reasonable again.

You missed the point. Now that infections have spread so far, the level of lockdowns that would be necessary to bring the outbreak down to that level aren't even possible in an open society. But it will be a good approach to try during the early stage of the next pandemic.

I admire your optimism that the people in charge might learn from this when they clearly haven't[1] from the last few.

[1] Excepting places like Taiwan, etc., who clearly did learn.

People seem to forget that people are still getting ill as usual, in addition to the covid cases. Hospitals still have to treat everyone they used to, in addition to all the new covid patients

In europe at least, all hospital switched to treating only essential procedures, basically almost anything non life threatening is postponed.

It got into ridiculous situations where a friend who is an urology doctor was on paid leave for last few weeks, simply no work for them under these rules. Another friend, radiologist in a hospital heavily hit by covid, worked only 4 hours/day shifts, instead of usual 10-12 ones.

So no, hospitals definitely don't treat everybody they used to, only those that would literally die if postponed. And even there sometimes they don't, ie they stopped resuscitating severe heart attacks here few weeks ago, because its too equipment-intense and uncertain. Equipment is +-same as that used for covid patients.

Most of the normal workload for hospital isn't emergency, but all those non-severe treatments like dermatology, arthritis, broken bones etc. That's maybe 80% of the staff.

> It got into ridiculous situations where a friend who is an urology doctor was on paid leave for last few weeks, simply no work for them under these rules. Another friend, radiologist in a hospital heavily hit by covid, worked only 4 hours/day shifts, instead of usual 10-12 ones.

I'm assuming specialists ain't allowed to work as generalists, then? I'd imagine that specialized doctors (like urologists) should be able to double as PCPs should the need arise (like, you know, a global pandemic). I ain't a doctor, though, so I'm perfectly willing to accept "specialist and generalist practice are too different from one another" as the answer here.

There is not a constant supply. ER departments in most hospitals are underutilized right now. Doctors and nurses are being laid off or having their hours cut due to lack of work.