
Where coronavirus hospitalizations are falling - laurex
https://www.axios.com/state-by-state-coronavirus-hospitalizations-04da87ed-476e-4dad-84ec-bd5db7a7bce7.html
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kippinitreal
Isn’t “percentage of occupied beds w/ covid” a terrible metric? As states open
up and elective surgeries, car accidents etc increase the denominator will
inevitably increase and this will appear to go down regardless of any positive
change. What is wrong with the much simpler metric of “number of beds used by
covid patients”?

~~~
dragonwriter
> Isn’t “percentage of occupied beds w/ covid” a terrible metric?

It's not perfect, but in terms of the readily available data, it's not
terrible.

> As states open up and elective surgeries, car accidents etc increase the
> denominator will inevitably increase

OTOH, there's a credible argument that that is a kind of positive progress
itself. And, no, it's _not_ inevitable that the denominator will go up if
COVID already has hospitals at capacity.

> What is wrong with the much simpler metric of “number of beds used by covid
> patients”?

That's a good measure for any state, but bad for comparing conditions among
states. Share of _available_ hospital beds occupied by COVID-19 patients might
be better, but “available” is not always clear since physical capacity and
staffing and other support may not yield the same maximum. Because of required
staffing ratios, etc.

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rb808
With the many covid websites out there its surprisingly difficult to find the
information you want. [https://www.syracuse.com/coronavirus-
ny/](https://www.syracuse.com/coronavirus-ny/) is quite good in that it shows
the total number of people in hostpital over time, and change in intubations.
NY State only.

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Munky-Necan
I'm wondering how good fo a marker this is. We've already had people with
significant heart attack symptoms refuse to go to the hospital, so is a
similar trend happening here with COVID?

One thing I find a little suspect about this article, although I do respect
Axios, is that hospital usage in Texas has not peaked yet and is currently
rising ([https://covid19.healthdata.org/united-states-of-
america/texa...](https://covid19.healthdata.org/united-states-of-
america/texas)).

~~~
chasd00
just to further complicate things and show how stats are all over the place,
the Texas Tribune has hospitalizations flat (even slightly decreasing on
average) since about May 1

[https://apps.texastribune.org/features/2020/texas-
coronaviru...](https://apps.texastribune.org/features/2020/texas-coronavirus-
cases-map/?_ga=2.10297781.1282549010.1589667988-730639434.1588979647)

~~~
HarryHirsch
Hospitalizations are a lagging indicator. The incubation period is 2 weeks,
people grow sick enough to be hospitalized in week 3, and death occurs in week
4 or 5. That said, excess deaths are a reliable number, you can't fudge
deaths.

~~~
lhuser123
I know someone who was recently hospitalized(Texas, US) but was not counted as
a coronavirus patient because the test were negative(they didn’t test for anti
bodies). The illness resembles almost everything I have read about people with
complications from the virus. Doctors & nurses when asked, they all say that
for the anti bodies test, the patient would have to go some place else.

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lucb1e
... within the USA

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chasd00
only 44 states are shown (if I counted correctly) and GA is missing which
opened the earliest. anyone know why some states, especially GA, were omitted?

EDIT: i must have missed it, from a comment below, "It says 'Among the 40
states that have consistently provided data'"

~~~
JadeNB
It says "Among the 40 states that have consistently provided data" (and,
indeed, I count 40, not 44; missing are Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Hawaii,
Idaho, Kansas, Nebraska, Nevada, South Carolina, and Tennessee).

~~~
henriquez
Florida and Georgia seem really important since they opened up far enough back
that we should be able to get a sense of how their shutdowns impacted
infection rates.

~~~
danesparza
This is just bananas: [https://www.covidmappingproject.com/dashboards/how-we-
count-...](https://www.covidmappingproject.com/dashboards/how-we-count-cases-
in-georgia)

"A number of friends and visitors to the site have noticed a discrepancy in
how we count “new” cases and how the state of Georgia is counting new cases.

For example, on April 21st, Covid Mapping Project reports 934 “new” cases.
Covid Tracking, a companion site run by a team from The Atlantic, doesn’t
report differentials but they do report a day by day tracking of cases. On
April 20, they report Georgia had 18,947 positive cases and on April 21st they
reported 19,881 cases. A differential of 934. Same as us.

However, if you got the GA DPH website (where most of us source our data),
you’ll see 10 “new” cases. That was later revised to 84. And then 138. It's a
moving number that will likely change every day for at least a week. Quite
different than the 934 we’re reporting."

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m0zg
Notably missing is Georgia, which opened up weeks ago, and where both the new
cases and deaths continued to fall. In fact GA is missing from the news in
general, unlike 2 weeks ago, when everyone was predicting a massive explosion
in new cases.

~~~
kgin
Not sure I understand

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claudeganon
It’s staggering to me how much people in the US have an normalized this level
of death and injury, driven by a failed state response, when counter examples
like South Korea and Taiwan exist.

The U.S. has 86,541 coronavirus deaths. South Korea has 260. Even if we adjust
for population, we expect the US to have 1700, were we following South Korea’s
example.

How is it that people have just swung fully into embracing our having 50 times
as many deaths as we could have prevented? How is it that people believe the
rush to “reopen,” without implementing measures at the level of countries like
South Korea and Taiwan, won’t result in an even worse outcome?

~~~
derekp7
I think it is because even with the current measures, we still have the 86,000
deaths. And at this point, people think the South Korea style measures won't
work (too high of a case load, the cat is already out of the bag), and people
are getting lock down fatigue.

So one way of looking at it -- no matter what we do, some large percentage
(say 70%) of the population will get infected, and a percentage of them will
die. By continuing the lock downs, those infections get pushed down the road a
bit but they won't be prevented. The only thing that lock downs are good for
is to keep the health system from being overwhelmed (where a larger percentage
of those infected will die due to lack of resources).

Now my question, is the above a reasonable set of assumptions? I don't see it
spelled out like that anywhere, but reading between the lines that seems like
what the pro reopening people are saying.

Now, what I'd personally like to see, is instead of a full re-opening, is an
order that says any job that can be done remotely, the employer must allow the
employees to do remote. Because there are a number of cases I've seen reported
here where people were forced into the office just because management wanted
to see butts in seats.

~~~
matthewdgreen
Many parts of the world used lockdowns to get cases under control, and plan to
use test-trace-isolate (and hopefully any better treatments that are
discovered) to manage the epidemic. The claim that "all those infections [and
presumably deaths] can't be prevented" seems to be at very best unjustified,
at worst -- demonstrably untrue.

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standardUser
"No more than 25% of hospital beds in any state are occupied by coronavirus
patients."

There seem to be two camps on this topic. One says that this is great, and we
should continue every effort possible to stop the spread, presumably for an
unlimited number of months or even years. That means staying locked down with
minimal economic activity and somehow dealing with the consequences as they
come. This is the "wait for the vaccine" camp, which I find hard to join
because even _if_ a safe vaccine can be created, it could be a year or two
before it is sufficiently tested and deployed. California seems to be leading
this camp in the US.

The second camp says that excess healthcare capacity means we should begin
reopening the economy until capacity becomes strained. This is the "let the
virus spread" camp, and implicit in the argument is that we should allow more
people to die from the virus. This camp is winning. Most states and Western
nations have started to ease restrictions knowing full well that it means the
virus will spread. The hope is that less stringent restrictions can still
allow the rate of transmission to be controlled enough to avoid catastrophe.

(There is also a third, fringe camp in the US of right-wingers, and while it
is easy to dismiss them, they are actually winning in states like Georgia and
Texas)

My understanding at the start of lockdowns was that these were intended to
"bend the curve" so we could get control of the situation and then allow the
virus to spread at a rate that would not overwhelm healthcare capacity. But
more and more people I know seem to be in the "wait for a vaccine" camp.
Personally, my imagination struggles to comprehend what another 12+ months of
lockdowns would mean for civilization. The loss of life from disease, though
obviously abhorrent, is actually a concept my brain can manage (which is not
to imply it has more merit, just an honest observation).

~~~
0xB31B1B
I don’t think this framing is correct. No one wants things to be shut down
until we have a vaccine, they want it to be shut down until we have a test and
trace infrastructure in place. California’s reopen plan is gated by test and
trace. It’s What every other developed country in the world is doing to allow
them to reopen. We see this framed by right wingers as “stay closed” vs “open
up” because they understand that this administration isn’t capable of
launching an effective spread prevention program and are now solely focusing
on shifting the blame.

~~~
catalogia
> _No one wants things to be shut down until we have a vaccine, they want it
> to be shut down until we have a test and trace infrastructure in place._

I wouldn't say "no one":

> _Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti said Wednesday that the city will "never be
> completely open until we have a cure,"_

This is also a mentality I've seen numerous times on the web, including this
site.

~~~
chasd00
yes, I don't understand it, but there seems to be a large group who want the
lockdowns to remain no matter what. A commenter in a thread last week even
went so far as to say the lockdowns were, overall, good for society. I have no
explanation except maybe the national election. I hope that's not it because
the wholesale destruction of livelihoods just to stick it to the other side is
a very depressing thought.

~~~
ghaff
There are a variety of reasons IMO:

\-- Many of those making these comments are probably WFH with some level of
normalcy so they don't really see how and why a lot of people are anxious to
open things back up.

\-- In the same general vein, they see a push to reopen as part of an agenda
that puts "the economy" over people for the benefit of Big Business/The Rich.

\-- They think there must be a near-term technological/policy fix if only the
bad politicians would stop messing things up.

