[jobseeker990]

I'm thinking worst case we build 3x as many hospitals as we have now, and make sure we can accommodate anyone who needs intensive care.

Not a useful short term solution but I don't see why not for the long term. It just becomes another infliction that we prepare for and handle the best we can.

[yumraj]

Where are you going to find the doctors and nurses to staff the 3X hospitals?

It's not just a bed problem.

[jdm2212]

Yeah, "beds" are a proxy for overall resources. If they just needed beds, they could just order some from Casper or Ikea or something.

[yumraj]

You're missing the point.

Buildings can be constructed, beds and associated equipment and I did mean beds as in hospital beds with associated equipment (ICU or otherwise) - where are you going to educated and train doctors and nurses to manage 3X.

Also, a common argument would be 3X is for such black swan events. What will happen to those beds, hospitals and manpower in a normal situation, especially with costs associated with educating and training medical professionals.

Don't get me wrong, I'm onboard with the fact that something fundamentally needs to change all over the world.

[mrob]

>where are you going to educated and train doctors and nurses to manage 3X

I suggest introducing a medical equivalent of military reserve forces/organized militias. These would be volunteers who train several times a year with medical professionals, to be called up in emergencies. Training would be limited to the skills most important in a pandemic. To incentivize volunteering, they could be given priority for medical treatment when resources are limited.

[brippalcharrid]

Even so, if those volunteers who are going to be performing dangerous and invasive (but potentially life-saving) procedures (like intubating people) and making snap life-or-death decisions (that require aptitude + years of medical education + experience, to avoid inadvertently killing their patients), we're going to need to have a very different set of expectations about these emergency volunteer medics/nurses than we would have for professional medics/nurses. With respect to death rates, expertise, errors, negligence, professional standards, how they will respond psychologically to the work. They would probably be better than nothing, but I imagine that an average person would rather have professional treating them than a volunteer, so that would be something that we would have to work through as a society.

[mrfusion]

That’s a really great idea!

[eternalban]

So future arrives even faster with robots to the rescue.

(Nano-technology sector should also see a huge boost in investment, says my crystal ball.)

[coding123]

With the economy strangled, how would it be possible to build more hospitals. At some point you can't ask people that don't want to do it to work for free.

[knzhou]

Well, the point of having a government at all is to be able to step in when businesses can't afford to do something, or aren't incentivized to.

[xur17]

They don't have to work for free - the government can pay them.

[mrfusion]

you don’t seem to be suggesting an alternative.