[rst]

Unfortunately, in Italy, space for other hospital departments has had to be converted to extra space for acute COVID-19 cases. (And they're still overflowing, to the point of doing battlefield triage to determine which severe but potentially viable patients get the ventilators.) It would be very unfortunate for that to also happen here, but unfortunately, Seattle at least seems to be trending that way.

[jacquesm]

The USA is roughly 16 days behind Italy at the moment.

[Ninn]

US are not even testing, theres a ton of evidence that cases upon cases that match the description of corona does not get tested. The US could very well be much much futher ahead already than the current official claims.. Much like China was criticised for.

[lumost]

The USA is a much larger country with dramatically more hospital capacity. It's better to compare state by state numbers to Italy.

[remarkEon]

Italy has more hospital beds per person than the US, 3.18 (2017) vs 2.77 (2016 ... no Wiki data for 2017).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_OECD_countries_by_hosp...

[Laforet]

It might be better to look at beds available near the major disease clusters rather than a country as a whole, given that patients are unlikely to be transported around the country to fill the beds.

[remarkEon]

True, though I suspect that to make the picture in the US remarkably worse.

[jacquesm]

Italy actually has a pretty good healthcare system, especially in the North, better than in the States (unless you're rich). The bigger difference is that the Italian population skews older. And with the situation at US airports right now it looks like there is some bad news coming down in another two weeks or so.