Quote:
Originally Posted by Replaced_Texan
The death rate isn't as important as the hospitalization rate. That's generally at 20 percent of the cases. Which with that 2 million dead would be somewhere around 15-20 million hospitalized. The death rate probably would go up, too because capacity issues mean we can't take care of everyone who needs hospitalization.
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His 2 mil number may include deaths caused as a result of lack of medical capacity. The Gates Foundation models I think include that factor in their peaking projections.
His 2 mil number may also include a projection of "deaths from Covid at home (or elsewhere) not attributed to Covid" that Ty refernces in his recent post.
But putting aside the 2 mil number, the concept of letting people return to work in waves makes sense. It allows for staggering in such a manner that hospitals would not be overwhelmed. If the anecdotes about treatments that keep people off ventilators turn out to be close to accurate and we can keep people out of ICUs, it is possible to let people back into work in order of least to highest risk.
But to channel Andrew Yang, it's going to compel Americans to think a bit more than they might want to. And for certain cities, due to population density, it won't be an option until a bit later.
The first step is to admit that the economy and the health crisis are not mutually exclusive. People will die of both, arguably in greater numbers from a depression than from Covid-19 itself. So people like Emanuel need to expand their data sets to consider the deaths that will occur from the depression and then re-run their numbers. Allow multidisciplinary thinkers who can consider the economic impacts and health crisis impacts at the same time, rather than elevate one over the other, to make the policy suggestions.
