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by partiallypro 2307 days ago
The survival rate is also probably thrown off though because some countries have better trained health professionals. No one in the US (that made it to US care) has died as of yet. In other countries without advanced facilities available, the rates are much higher. If the disease hits Africa and more of the ME, the rate will go up. While in the US, and richer countries like Germany, etc the rate will probably be low.
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There's some validity to that, but a lot depends on how widespread the disease becomes. There are about 100,000 ICU beds in the US, and they can't all be allocated to coronavirus patients. Not having access to a ventilator would be pretty much equivalent to a death sentence for some patients. There are <100,000 ventilators in the US, and they're not evenly distributed (some areas and hospitals have very few). It wouldn't take much of a pandemic to exhaust our supply of ICU beds and other critical-care resources.