[pipeoperator]

Everyone can empathise with wanting life to get back to normal. However the problem with folk wanting to take the individual risk is that the “low” percentage of people needing medical help can still overburden health care systems.

This potentially means that people with other illness / disease can’t / don’t see a doctor in time, and others in a society take the brunt.

Yes, let’s open up; but let’s not throw caution to the wind either.

[leesalminen]

> can still overburden health care systems

But they haven’t. The prevailing opinion I’m seeing on HN recently is that the US didn’t do a “real” lockdown which is why there are still so many cases. They opine that Americans largely didn’t “comply” with the government orders rendering any potential positive effects from lockdowns moot.

If you take that at face value, then shouldn’t we have had an overwhelmed medical system by now?

The Denver convention center was turned into a makeshift hospital for almost a year. They never had a single patient. My relatives lost their low-paying jobs and are still jobless today.

Remember the military hospital ships that were sent to NY and LA? They never saw a single COVID patient?

At this point I just don’t see any evidence that our healthcare system overwhelmed in any meaningful way. It’s FUD.

Don’t try and post an article about how some random ICU was at 80% capacity. ICUs are designed to be near operating capacity because it’s a waste of resources to over supply.

[dragonwriter]

> If you take that at face value, then shouldn’t we have had an overwhelmed medical system by now?

We did, in many cases, had overwhelmed medical systems at the local peaks, which were not nationally synchronized.

> Remember the military hospital ships that were sent to NY and LA? They never saw a single COVID patient?

You mean the ones that the military explicitly restricted to not taking COVID patients?

Yeah, I remember that. Funny how they never saw any COVID patients.

[leesalminen]

The US Navy reports that the Hospital Ship Mercy treated fewer than 200 patients in total.

“ By the time of Comfort’s departure, the approximately 1,200-person crew and 1,000-bed hospital had treated just 182 patients, of which approximately 70 percent had COVID-19”

So I guess we were both wrong.

https://www.navytimes.com/news/your-navy/2020/04/30/hospital...

[dragonwriter]

> The US Navy reports that the Hospital Ship Mercy treated fewer than 200 patients in total.

Mercy treated 77 patients and was not reconfigured for COVID, Comfort treated more after being converted to COVID just before local cases dropped from their peak for the wave the ship was present for.

It completed reconfiguration to take COVID patients on April 7, just before new cases in both NYC and NYS started rapidly dropping. It almost entirely missed the time it was needed.

I think they are both evidence that both the response and the systems for utilizing new resources wet optimized for the real needs, but neither shows that healthcare systems weren't overwhelmed.

[dragonwriter]

> So I guess we were both wrong.

Er, how was I wrong, again?

[leesalminen]

> You mean the ones that the military explicitly restricted to not taking COVID patients?

Yet 70% of the 182 patients had COVID.

[dragonwriter]

Sorry, I realized and would have deleted that if you hadn't been so quick.

[pipeoperator]

This is a worldwide pandemic, not restricted to the borders of the US. People in countries around the world complied with quarantine, but their healthcare systems were still under real pressure. If they were not overwhelmed, it was a close run thing only prevented by social distancing.

Hospitals cancelled and delayed medical procedures around the world due to this: Italy, Spain, the UK, etc.

While the worst case scenarios of healthcare systems on their knees have not panned out, it’s disingenuous to suggest that the impact is imaginary or FUD.

[leesalminen]

It’s not clear to me how illustrating the flaws in one country’s healthcare system should affect the decision of another’s who hasn’t experienced the same flaws even with greater per-capita cases of the virus.

My comment was geared towards America because I’m an American talking on a forum operated by an American company.

Italy can lock down to their heart’s content- that’s their prerogative.

[willyt]

For an average person, Italy, Spain and the UK have better healthcare systems than the US by most metrics. The US is only better for some very obscure and exotic diseases that require expensive and rare treatments that most US citizens wouldn’t be able to afford or wouldn’t be covered for under their health care plans.

[leesalminen]

I’ve all kinds of not nice things to say about the US healthcare system but their ability to not get overwhelmed during this pandemic compared to Italy, Spain and UK is remarkable, as the parent poster (probably unintentionally) mentioned.