Can we finally agree NYC hospitals were overly dramatic? There were no bed, ventilator, or staffing issues.

It's amazing what shutting down the economy will do.

It was not just the hospitals. Every single infectious disease expert and media article has been over dramatic about the deadliness of the virus, the spread rate, and the hospitalizations required. First it was going to be a million deaths, then 100-200,000...now I’m not even sure we’ll break 35,000. So basically...the flu.

You know what they haven’t overdramatized? The economic fallout. I would say 6/10 people I know have either had their hours cut, been laid off, closed their business, gotten a “temporary” pay cut, furloughed, or some other bad outcome from this shutdown. And I live in a white collar suburb where median household income is probably around 125,000.

The economy is not a light switch that can flip back on and suddenly everyone will have a job to go back to. Most companies who laid people off are going to realize, hey, we operate just fine with a 10% reduction in workforce, and we have to make up for lost revenue in March and April, so let’s not rehire any of those positions right now.

another fact wrote:

This is officially looking like a normal flu season even including covid deaths. Some, very few in fact, overly dramatic New York doctors and nurses have been on Tv complaining of being “overwhelmed” with death and work, but it turns out the census at all hospitals were either the same or lower than the the rest of the year and the number of deaths in nyc will be the same or lower.

Where are you seeing this data? Obviously if you cited some source you'd have more credibility.

Support link?

Ah yes,

A typical flu season... where daily flu deaths handily outnumber deaths from any other cause...

where refrigerated trucks are needed to store all of the dead bodies temporarily...

and where mass graves must be dug to keep up for morticians to keep up with the fatalities.

Truly typical in every way, isn't it?

Cuomo and his incessant whining was intolerable. Begging for 30,000-40,000 ventilators and then using 5,000. And he isn't the only one. A lot of these governors were lining up asking for ten times what they realistically needed.

everyone over dramatic wrote:

First it was going to be a million deaths, then 100-200,000...now I’m not even sure we’ll break 35,000.

It's amazing what shutting down the economy can do.

Kyzer Sozenator wrote:

everyone over dramatic wrote:

First it was going to be a million deaths, then 100-200,000...now I’m not even sure we’ll break 35,000.

It's amazing what shutting down the economy can do.

Unfortunately to be clear, we'll definitely break 35K this month, if not by the end of this week then early next week.

joedirt wrote:

Cuomo and his incessant whining was intolerable. Begging for 30,000-40,000 ventilators and then using 5,000. And he isn't the only one. A lot of these governors were lining up asking for ten times what they realistically needed.

Yeah, Cuomo is such an IDIOT for doing what's he elected to do and attempting to prepare his state for a worst case scenario.

I work in emergency management at a hospital in NY...

So first of all, there was/is a crisis of hospital beds and staff. The greater NYC area had roughly 22,000 hospital beds (before the Comfort and Javitz and all that). As many as 19,000 of those were used for COVID related admissions. I believe right now we're closer to 18,500 and hopefully that continues to fall. That left about 3,000 beds for EVERY THING ELSE. 3,000 beds for NYC for everything else is nothing. Folks are absolutely packed into hospitals right now. Additionally, most of those beds are not in ICUs. There were many folks treated on regular medical/surgical units that should have been in ICUs, but ICU space wasn't available (yes, ICU beds were added to handle the surge, but it is far from ideal). Two months ago, there were about 1,600 ICU beds in NYC. Right now there are over 3,500 people in ICU beds. It was a crisis. I can't even describe how incredibly taxing that is.

As far as staff, it takes special training to work in an ICU and with medically fragile patients. If you look at the raw numbers of licensed healthcare providers, it might look ok, but you don't want a gynecologist trying to help you keep breathing, right? Ideally in an ICU you'd have one nurse dedicated to one patient. People are in ICUs because they can crash at any time. If nurses were continuously running 12 hour shifts back to back, that's a minimum of 7,000 critical care nurses. Obviously no one can work 12 hours straights so you need folks to cover bathroom and meal breaks, so let's say that's 8,000 critical care nurses working 12 hour shifts back to back to back to back. That's in addition to respiratory therapists, physicians, aides, and everyone else involved. They're also doing this without all of the required PPE.

As far as the numbers of cases and fatalities, so far we're lucky. We're lucky that the shutdowns happened and we're lucky that people complied. Imagine how much worse it would be. That said, we're only about half way through is, and we'll blow 35,000 deaths out of the water. Just look at the numbers. We're storing bodies in food trucks and burying them in shallow graves. NYC isn't the only city doing that either.

Please tell me how we over dramatized the situation and please tell me how it wouldn't have been worse without the shutdown.

You’d almost think people took the advice seriously after Cuomo reminded them a gazillion times.

I was hoping someone who actually works in NYC hospital would respond. I was just about to ask the OP if he actually lives there and knows what’s going on. My guess is probably not and zero sources or links for the claims he made. Thank you for giving us a better picture.

To echo this, this is anything but normal and this with measures. Deaths are way higher than normal:

Meanwhile, surveillance data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention details deaths from coronavirus, pneumonia, and influenza paint an alarming picture. Across the five boroughs, 14,535 New Yorkers died between February 1st and April 4th, 133 percent more than expected based on averages of the number of deaths that occurred during the same period over the last three years. (As of Monday, the city’s statistics say that 6,182 New York City residents died of the virus who had been tested for it.)

For New York State, the number of actual deaths was 103 percent higher than expected. New Jersey also saw twice as many more deaths than expected at 15,644.

joedirt wrote:

Cuomo and his incessant whining was intolerable. Begging for 30,000-40,000 ventilators and then using 5,000. And he isn't the only one. A lot of these governors were lining up asking for ten times what they realistically needed.

Cuomo, like pretty much everybody forced to plan for the pandemic's effect, used the best available modeling, which is provided by an institute at the University of Washington. I'm sure you're familiar with it, since you talk with such assurance about what was "realistically needed." They're currently projecting 68,000 COVID deaths by August 1.

The truth is, flattening the curve worked. Mitigation worked. It killed the economy, but it worked.

If Trump hadn't wasted weeks, of course, we would have a reasonably good economy now and far fewer deaths.

You're wasting your time with the true deniers like the OP and joedirtbag and others. Hey, they might even know you're right but have marching orders from the Kremlin...

Do the recent changes in your projections mean that hospitals in the US may have overprepared?

Some hospitals in the US appear to have overprepared, such as hospitals in Washington state. However, we believe that it is better for health systems to prepare for the upper range of values in the forecast instead of the middle or lower range to ensure that sufficient resources are in place.

LRC keyboard warriors accusing Emergency Rooms of being “dramatic” lol.

WTF are you talking about. I have colleagues who are staffing EDs and ICUs in the Bronx who have people dying in hallways and ICUs at twice capacity due to COVID.

It's time to think about a recovery.

An economic crash can cause even more deaths if people cannot afford healthcare. There are increased rates of suicide.