| The numbers probably get worse with scale rather than better because larger countries can get away with having lower medical capacity than smaller countries (i.e., larger countries will be more efficient). The U.S. could probably build a hospital very quickly, but neither China nor the U.S. can build enough hospitals quickly enough, let alone equip them, let alone train nurses and doctors quickly enough. If the brown stuff really hits the moving fan blades, then military tent cities it will be, and it will be more like bad hospice care than like bad hospital care. One thing this crisis will do is highlight the need for more emergency pandemic handling capacity. That means: a) faster testing of vaccines (e.g., do double-blind testing on medical staff, since they need it most), b) faster emergency mass production of vaccines, c) faster emergency distribution of vaccines. Creation of new treatments (new anti-virals, ...) on an emergency basis is necessarily going to lag because it's much more costly and time consuming than development of new prevention (vaccines). Manufacturing new equipment (respirators) and so on also takes time (retooling, etc.). Building hospitals takes even longer (even if you can pull together to build one very quickly, equipping it will take time). And training staff takes eons. Throw in supply chain disruptions and, really, I think only emergency development and testing of new vaccines is plausible on a timescale similar to that of a pandemic. It's not like you can have a ton of spare capacity around: that's very costly too, and there's depreciation issues. Reaction time needs to be faster instead. One thing I'd like to see come out of this is a treaty or agreement on cross-certification and inspection of bio labs around the world, and an agreement to not develop bioweapons, or at the very very least to not develop bioweapons that are trivially transmissible from human to human. I think it's becoming clear that SARS-covid19 was leaked accidentally from the BSL-4 lab in Wuhan, or at least that it's very plausible that it came from there, and that is rather upsetting -- this must not happen again! |