[natvert]

This is a great example of how misleading relative change can be. Double of 1 is 2. Double of 27 is 54.

Stats like this should be presented in absolute numbers and given in context with comparable historical norms, e.g. deaths by other or all causes.

What I really want to know is how the likelihood of death by covid is related to likelihood of death by say, for example, car.

[ksaj]

ICU units aren't being overrun by car accident victims, and they haven't had to rent out refrigeration trucks to contain their corpses, so my gut instinct says Covid is quite a bit more likely to kill than car accidents in at least some (if not all) states.

That's not a very scientific method, but it seems likely.

[natvert]

Same analysis error. How many beds are there total in a given hospital is the right question.

Looks like _all_ community hospitals in the US have about 100,000 beds (including all types of ICU beds, even pediatric for example) https://www.aha.org/statistics/fast-facts-us-hospitals

Spread this out to cover the entire number of community hospitals ~5000, and that means if 5 families of 4 people get sick in any community, the hospital will be "overrun"

[natvert]

Conveniently, I just saw: https://twitter.com/bryanrbeal/status/1437551640559620098