
10% of Covid patients in intensive care unit - DyslexicAtheist
https://mailchi.mp/esicm/the-future-of-haemodynamic-monitoring-first-webinar-of-the-year-1009715
======
justinsaccount
10% of all positive cases or 10% of the people who already are seeking
advanced medical care?

Their wording is "10% of all positive patients."

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ilaksh
The problem I am having is that there is wildly contradictory information
coming out. Some numbers that make it sound only a little bit more dangerous
than flu, and then something like this that says 10% of positive cases need
respirators.

I think until we can be very sure that is not true, we should take this much
more seriously. Seems like they are not interested in testing people in the US
if they can find any excuse. I hope the people making that decision will
review this information.

~~~
drivebycomment
I don't trust the numbers from Italy and China - Italy because they seem to
have lost the control completely and there seems to be no proper testing of
significant population or tracking of the infected patients, and China
because...China.

So far, it seems Korea has the best data over the situation, and is likely the
most applicable for countries with proper public health and medical systems.

Per Korea's Ministry of Health and Welfare -
[http://ncov.mohw.go.kr/upload/viewer/skin/doc.html?fn=158337...](http://ncov.mohw.go.kr/upload/viewer/skin/doc.html?fn=1583372501478_20200305104145.pdf&rs=/upload/viewer/result/202003/)

As of today, 150K people tested, 5766 infected, 35 death, 0.6% fatality rate.
Their age distribution looks interesting:

0-30: ~2k infected, and no death.

30-50: ~1.5K infected, 2 death (0.1%)

50-59: 1127 infected, 5 death (0.4%)

60-69: 699 infected, 8 death (1.1%)

70-79: 288 infected, 13 death (4.5%)

80+: 127 infected, 7 death (5.6%)

Their number of infected graph is showing some sign of deceleration - the
growth rate seems to be leveling off or slowing down slightly.

~~~
eric-hu
I think Italy is particularly worth paying attention to as a bad case
approximation of what can happen in the US. About a week ago, Korea had tested
90k people while the US had 400 tests available and fewer tested.

~~~
dpau
Besides lack of testing, the US could turn out even worse than Italy given
that many lack insurance and/or cannot afford to call in sick.

~~~
counterpoint1
I'm growing tired of this meme.

Everybody in the US has insurance, that was literally a major point of
contention to Obamacare - the left didn't like that the solution still used
private insurers and the right didn't like that they were forced to buy
something. If you have a low income, you get subsidized premiums.

For sick pay, it's just a lack of budgeting and planning. If you have a job
that pays you $12/hr with no paid leave time or a job that pays you $10/hr
with an accumulation of leave hours, it's still the same in the end if you
work X days and are sick Y days and get a monthly income of $ZZZ, just in one
case your employer is holding back your leave pay and in the other case you're
paid full value up front and save for your leave period yourself.

~~~
lm28469
> Everybody in the US has insurance

Isn't that factually wrong ?[https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/politics-
news/number-americ...](https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/politics-news/number-
americans-without-health-insurance-rises-1st-time-decade-n1052016)

> it's just a lack of budgeting and planning.

Which people living paycheck to paycheck can't do.
[https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/nearly-half-
american...](https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/nearly-half-americans-
live-paycheck-to-paycheck-bank-survey)

~~~
klmadfejno
It is factually wrong. The correct way to phrase it would be that anyone can
commit moral hazard and sign up for a public plan in response to a sudden need
for medical treatment. So insurance can be available in a way that defeats the
purpose of insurance systems.

However:

1) This is not free

2) This is not likely to save you from enormous medical costs

3) This is about on par with filing taxes. Probably easy to do if you
understand the basics of whats going on, but few people do.

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anonuser123456
Worth pointing out that that the average age in Italy is 46 vs 37 in China.
Given that old age is well known to increase mortality and morbidity, we
should expect worse outcomes in Italy.

~~~
gnur
Life expectancy between Italy and China differs by about 7 years in Italy's
favor, so I guess it's not that big of a difference.

~~~
kid_atticus
True, but the age distribution skews older in Italy.

Italy:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Italypop.svg](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Italypop.svg)
China:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Population_pyramid_of_Chi...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Population_pyramid_of_China_2016.png)

------
yumraj
I really wish that China had not filtered/hidden the data related to Covid-19
for its population. That would have really helped the rest of the World
prepare better.

Right now the rest of the world is just grappling with if the mortality is
3.4% or is it higher or lower. How many, across gender and age groups and so
on, end up in ICU vs have milder symptoms, and so on..

~~~
erentz
You can possibly try to blame China for hiding things up until mid January.
But absolutely after that you can’t. At that point the entire world had more
than good enough data to see how serious this was and that it was going to
become a pandemic. Yet even still now the response in the western world is
totally underwhelming for the seriousness of the situation. I’m in Seattle
which is heading right towards becoming America’s Wuhan and they still aren’t
even cancelling all events or closing all schools and colleges.

~~~
ourlordcaffeine
There is a big "It won't happen to me" mentality I can see going around. In
many people's minds, coronavirus is something people in Asia get, not
something westerners get.

Students at the university in my town are bragging about going skiing in
northern Italy, saying "It's overblown" and "It won't happen to me".

Even acquaintances are saying "It's just the flu, what's the big deal?".

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ctoth
It's funny how the same heuristics I have developed around the growth of
artificial intelligence are useful here. Spotting long term indicators
trending in a bad direction. Having the gumption to examine a repellent
conclusion, even though my mind wants to shy away from it. Ignoring ridicule
and trusting numbers over social cues.

Not that it's done me any good.

------
ctoth
Really really hope people are paying attention to this. Suspect we're just
sleepwalking into a disaster.

~~~
smt88
Literally tens of thousands of people (if not hundreds of thousands) are
working on this outbreak. My friend works for the CDC in Atlanta, and the
taskforce in that city alone is 1,500 people. They work 75 hrs/wk exclusively
on this outbreak.

The idea that the many thousands of people with jobs and doctorates in public
health, epidemiology, and medicine would be sleepwalking while you (and I
assume some other people) are more aware of the impending disaster is
ludicrous.

~~~
senordevnyc
Then why are we 8 weeks into this and the US has tested approximately no one,
while other countries are testing thousands per day? Wtf are these 1500 people
doing for 75 hours per week?

~~~
smt88
Each test kit has a limited number of uses[. The first batch of thousands of
test kits had a flaw and couldn't be used[1]. With a limited number of kits,
they had to limit testing to high-risk people.

As I've written on HN before, a great deal of the problem is that the current
administration appoints political donors and anti-government activists to
important roles in agencies handling science and medicine. These are mid-level
people whose names almost never end up in news.

So you have incompetent decision makers appointed throughout the organization,
funding cuts, discouragement of civil service at all (through things like
killing debt forgiveness and stagnating wages), and an administration that
publicly denies the problem is even serious because it's afraid of the stock
market tanking.

Add to that that the State Dept has been gutted and has many hundreds of open
positions that the administration refuses to fill, and you have more disasters
like allowing likely-infected Americans to return to the US without testing or
quarantine.

1\. [https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/02/health/coronavirus-
testin...](https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/02/health/coronavirus-testing-
cdc.html)

~~~
senordevnyc
Oh, i'm 100% on board with the fact that it's not the experts' fault. But it's
also not at all fair to say "Thousands of people are working on this, so we
can't be sleepwalking!" and that's what I was responding to. Thousands of
people _might_ be working on this, but if their work is being ignored or
undermined, they might as well not be.

