Then why are they not massively ramping up ICU capacity? Surely the 'cost' of doing that is less than the 'cost' of shutting down huge sections of society?

Why don't we have the same lockdowns when influenza threatens to overwhelm hospitals each year?

Where is the focus on public health interventions such as mass Vitamin D, Vitamin C, Zinc supplemenation, as well as seriously dealing with obesity (banning or taxing added sugar) and air pollution (banning or taxing coal and oil)?

> Then why are they not massively ramping up ICU capacity?

Because you cannot. Even if you have the space and the materials, you do not have the qualified and experienced personel to run it.

> Because you cannot. Even if you have the space and the materials, you do not have the qualified and experienced personel to run it.

Oh yes you do. Absolutely. They're called traveler nurses and there are literally thousands of them out there. Agencies like Krucial Staffing have been hiring hundreds of them at a time and sending them to places like El Paso. Which now has a declining ICU admission rate.

If they said "We need 500 ICU nurses to be in California within 48 hours" they would have them.

Whether or not the big union in California would let this happen, however, is another story in itself.

But yes, you absolutely can get people to staff it.

Even if we have enough nurses, we also need more doctors, respiratory therapists, and so on...

At some point in a wave, the number of ICU beds used across the US would be greater than the number of professionals available even if they moved to other hot spots when they could. It's a good idea to stay as far away from that point as we can, especially if we're unsure about the rate of spread in the winter/flu season.

> Why don't we have the same lockdowns when influenza threatens to overwhelm hospitals each year?

People keep making comparisons to flu, so it's useful to talk a bit about how covid-19 is much more lethal than flu.

I know the numbers for the UK. Official numbers for flu are about 10,000 to 20,000 deaths each year. Official numbers for covid-19 are currently about 60,000.

Already we can see covid-19 is much more lethal. But this ignores differences in counting.

If we count flu using the same methods we're currently using for covid we see only a couple of hundred, fewer than 1000, deaths to flu each year.

If we count covid using the same methods we use to count flu deaths we'd see at least 140,000 covid deaths.

> Where is the focus on public health interventions

We have internationally coordinated programmes of work to monitor which flu strains are active, then develop vaccines to target these, then to vaccinate as many vulnerable people as possible.

Why would you need ICU capacity? There is no working medication, no cure, no regime. The only treatment (intubation) turned out to outright kill patients. The only thing you will get in a hospital is oxygen to help you breath while 50% of admitted die.

Every sentence you emit is completely false. There is working medication, there is a regimen (I assume that's what you mean by regime).

Overall, your idea, which seems to be, "Let's not admit people who have serious COVID-19 symptoms to the hospital and just let me them die," shows a complete disregard both for science and for human life.

Its the actual reality. I have 4 family members in different stages of covid. From my previous post:

'Two of my family members received portable (oxygen) units and isolated at home, third didnt get anything other than some pills for inflammation, last one stayed at the hospital and didnt receive anything other than oxygen and some random probably useless antibiotics.'

Yes, you will get pumped with ramdesivir and steroids .. if you are a head of state like Donald or Boris, the rest get optional oxygen and a fuck off sticker.

I think you're conflating a VIP getting favorable treatment to your family getting normal treatment. I imagine that other people who went to the same places your family were seen at recieved other treatments if they had worse presentation. If your family worsened they should receive other treatments as well. Hopefully they will have a mild version and fully recover, and if they don't, and nothing is done, someone needs to step in on their behalf and escalate things.

My great uncle was in critical condition, once again - oxygen and useless antibiotics. And about subpar treatment, that branch of family has 3 doctors and couple of nurses, he was actually treated preferentially.

Can you speak to his doctor, or ask a close family member to? If he's being given antibiotics for no reason, that should be reported. On the flip side, especially with covid, doctors may try to aggressively treat anything else present because it can complicate things and because bacteria are largely something we can treat, especially compared to covid.