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A comment on Antiviral Molnupiravir Reduces Risk of Hospitalization/Death by ~50 Percent. Parent comment

Re:Antiviral Molnupiravir Reduces Risk of Hospitalization/De... by smnrchrds on Friday October 01, 2021 @01:33PM (#28721311)
Alberta has 173 normal ICU beds. As of this Monday, there were 312 Albertans in ICUs, 265 of whom for COVID [1]. The extra 139 beds were surge capacity, created by shutting down other services, postponing surgeries, and diverting resources to COVID ICU treatments.

Even if the number of COVID patients in ICUs halved, we would have 132 people in the ICU with COVID, or 179 patients in total for all causes. It would still be over capacity and need surge beds, but it would still be much better than the current state. What this tells me is that whether we can skip mandates depends a lot on healthcare capacity in your region. Maybe the US with its higher population-adjusted ICU beds can get back to normal sooner than Canada.

[1] https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/edmonton/alberta-health-care-...

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Re:Antiviral Molnupiravir Reduces Risk of Hospitalization/De... by shrubble on Friday October 01, 2021 @02:51PM (#28722117)
Alberta has 4.4 mln or so people.

Colorado, with 5.8 mln people, has over 1700 ICU beds.

Alberta's been 'running on fumes' re: ICU beds and they got caught out...

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Re:Antiviral Molnupiravir Reduces Risk of Hospitalization/De... by smnrchrds on Friday October 01, 2021 @03:48PM (#28722633)
I don't think the two jurisdictions count ICU beds the same. Alberta (and Canada in general) have about half as many ICU beds per capita as the US, not 1/10th. If I had to guess, I would say the number for Colorado includes other types of ICU (neonatal, cardiac, etc.) that the Albertan number doesn't. Alberta has 8,513 acute care beds. How many of those would be counted as ICU beds per the Colorado definition, I don't know.

https://www.albertahealthservices.ca/about/about.aspx

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Re:Antiviral Molnupiravir Reduces Risk of Hospitalization/De... by PaulDavisThe1st on Friday October 01, 2021 @04:04PM (#28722803)
Arguably, most of the world's industrial economies have been running on fumes increasingly over the last 30-40 years, as "fat has been trimmed", JIT supply chains have taken over, and "efficiency via merger-then-closure" have been common themes in national economies.
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