Why isn't there a shortage of hospital resources during a typical flu season?

Dumb people are too dumb to know they are dumb. That's about all there is to it!

gilt wrote:

Tribe wrote:

+2. Really great post. And add that corona epicenters like NYC are seeing even larger relative surges.

+4. Thank you for your succinct answer. This is what I was looking for (other posters' snide replies be damned)

+7 (or something like that)

NYC is seeing 1,000 additional hospitalizations every day now. 222 people died on Saturday alone. That's nothing like the flu. It's not the flu, try to understand that.

BillyBongHead wrote:

GOML wrote:

Because. This. Isn’t. Just. A. Bad. Flu.

It’s much worse.

Repeat that as necessary until it sinks in.

Signed,

A frustrated physician

Yep. People are such dumbasses. Can't understand why they don't get this unless they are just watching Fox all day.

Isn't it technically just a a really bad cold? :)

Calling it a bad flu is ok. But then you have to explain what a bad flu is since most of us don't have any experience with them. How many people remember the bad flus of 1918, 1957 or 1968? A bad flu isn't when you feel sick for a week. It is when the death and hospitalization rates goes up 10x, the transmission rate is 2x, and we don't have a vaccine that works and not a lot of experience treating it.

dadsfadsfdasfdsafdas wrote:

BillyBongHead wrote:

Yep. People are such dumbasses. Can't understand why they don't get this unless they are just watching Fox all day.

Isn't it technically just a a really bad cold? :)

Calling it a bad flu is ok. But then you have to explain what a bad flu is since most of us don't have any experience with them. How many people remember the bad flus of 1918, 1957 or 1968? A bad flu isn't when you feel sick for a week. It is when the death and hospitalization rates goes up 10x, the transmission rate is 2x, and we don't have a vaccine that works and not a lot of experience treating it.

No, it's not a bad cold.

How can we tell that?

It's quite straightforward; it only takes a few minutes to review the basics and see that it is clear.

A cold is correlated with runny and stuffy noses.

A flu is correlated with incidences of pneumonia and respiratory distress.

I don't know if you realize it, but the "ARS" in "SARS-CoV-2" stands for acute respirator distress.

Maybe because when a flu case enters the hospital they don't have to put on bio hazard suits and act like Ebola just walked in.

And probably, almost certainly, because people with the flu don't normally swamp the hospitals demanding to be admitted and tested for coronaviruses.

tryingtohelp wrote:

A cold is correlated with runny and stuffy noses.

A flu is correlated with incidences of pneumonia and respiratory distress.

I don't know if you realize it, but the "ARS" in "SARS-CoV-2" stands for acute respirator distress.

WRONG. There are already human coronaviruses, classified as common cold viruses, which can cause acute respiratory distress in precisely the same people SARS-CoV-2 can. In other people they cause colds, just as SARS-CoV-2 does.

Many otherwise docile pathogens can cause severe illness in people with weakened immune systems. Much of the pneumonia caused by cold and flu viruses is actually caused directly by secondary, non-viral pathogens. That's why the medics sometimes use antibiotics, which have no effect on viruses.

Ha, here's BW back, after all his whining predictions turned out to be maybe even worse than Trump's....

And apparently he can't distinguish a virus from a disease, even three months into this epidemic.

It's really too bad he can't ever learn even the simplest things.

Oh good lord...because most people who have the flu don't go to the doctor for one and if they do most of them don't need to stay for weeks on end.

Giles Corey wrote:

run more not less wrote:

There are a few hospitals being overwhelmed because the cases are concentrated in a few areas. 95% of the hospitals in US are currently overstaffed because so many patients are cancelling regular appointments.

Source?

This site will show in most states there is a surplus of hospital beds and resources (currently). In Oregon my sibling is a nurse. Their floor has not been staffed at full capacity for over a week. Two days ago the floor was staffed at 60% of normal nursing staff because of low census.

I am not in the "bad flu" camp, and where this is bad currently it is really bad, but the reality is, on a national basis, at the present time, the capacity of the healthcare system is not taxed. I think New York is slanting that narrative some.

I’m sorry so many of you just don’t get it

ThatAverageRunner wrote:

I’m sorry so many of you just don’t get it

Well, you need to clarify what isn't being 'got'.

Typical number of folks in the UK that die from flu is 17,000. Fluctuates between 1,600 and 28,000. When there was a cold winter a few years back, and extra 20,000 people died. What did we do to prevent that? (not suggesting we shouldn't do anything, just that things need context).

Estimates for CV in the UK are 20,000 (I suspect more than this overall, but that's current estimates).

So we have a volumes in the same order of magnitude as flu and cold winter spells. Plus the economy is tanked, and important health cases put off, which will cause other deaths. Plus less funds now to pay for future care.

So which bit isn't it that folk aren't getting ? We get that symptoms are more severe, and take longer in hospital, and this absolutely should be catered for, more nurses and ventilators should be got (I'd suggest countries should have allowed for this type if issue already, but most seem not to have).

The bit I think in disagreement with what isn't 'got' is the hysteria.

VroomVroom wrote:

Oh good lord...because most people who have the flu don't go to the doctor for one and if they do most of them don't need to stay for weeks on end.

18 to 26 million medical visits due to the flu this year and 400 ,000 to 730,000 hospitalizations.

from the cdc reports

Duh, and they weren’t on ventilators dumb@ss because we don’t have that many.

Well...... wrote:

So which bit isn't it that folk aren't getting ? We get that symptoms are more severe, and take longer in hospital, and this absolutely should be catered for, more nurses and ventilators should be got (I'd suggest countries should have allowed for this type if issue already, but most seem not to have).

The bit I think in disagreement with what isn't 'got' is the hysteria.

Great post, but I actually heard that many health care workers that have tested positive for the Covid virus have had no, to very mild symptoms. Obviously the unfortunate problem is those with pre-existing medical conditions seem to be impacted in completely the other direction, much like with the common flu, pneumonia, but possibly even more fatally?