Emergence of a Deadly Coronavirus

Post Reply New Topic

Was the supposed "ventilator shortage" bogus?


The Ventilator Shortage That Wasn’t

The ventilator shortages of which we were all gravely warned have not yet come to pass.

In March, one of the most feared aspects of the pandemic was the widely reported coming shortage of ventilators. One well-publicized estimate, repeated by the New York Times, the New Yorker and CNN, was that the U.S. would need roughly one million ventilators, or more than five times as many as we had. Gulp. Ventilators are expensive, they’re complex machines, and they can’t be churned out in the thousands overnight.

In the state that (as of today) has one-third of the country’s confirmed COVID-19 cases, New York governor Andrew Cuomo sounded the alarm for ventilators repeatedly. On March 27, he acknowledged “I don’t have a crystal ball” but said his state desperately needed 30,000 ventilators, maybe 40,000, but had only 12,000. When President Trump noted that Cuomo’s state had thousands of unused ventilators it hadn’t even placed yet, Cuomo admitted this was true but said he still needed more: “Yes, they’re in a stockpile because that’s where they’re supposed to be because we don’t need them yet. We need them for the apex,” Cuomo said at the time. On April 2, Cuomo predicted the state would run out of ventilators in six days “at the current burn rate.” But on April 6, Cuomo noted, “We’re ok, and we have some in reserve.”

Now New York appears to have passed the apex. Deaths, a lagging indicator, crested at 799 on April 9 and hit 606 on April 16, the lowest figure since April 6. Hospitalizations are also declining, and on April 16 also hit their lowest level since April 6. Cuomo today has so many ventilators he is giving them away: On April 15, he said he was sending 100 of them to Michigan and 50 to Maryland. On April 16, he announced he was sending 100 to New Jersey.

https://www.nationalreview.com/2020/04/ ... e-to-pass/

https://www.abcnyheter.no/helse-og-livs ... rt-fra-who

WHO fears the worst is yet to come

I also think the worst is yet to come but I think this is a message to Trump to keep the cash flowing. We will all regret easing lockdown too soon, this is just the beginning.

Does microwaving fast food kill the CV?

I saw an interesting article that suggests that what media you consume is a better predictor of your views on the coronavirus than your underlying political views. So “conservatives” (by American standards) tend to be less informed about the disease and believe more falsehoods than the general population, but only because conservatives are more likely to watch Fox News. Once you control for that, political views stopping mattering so much. Conservatives who watch CNN, the American news network which tends to have a more balanced outlook, or MSNBC, which is more left-leaning, are no less well-informed than people with other views. Meanwhile, non-conservatives who watch Fox News are still badly informed.

So it’s a big mistake to try and turn this into a partisan issue. Many conservatives are well-informed and are behaving sensibly. Indeed, the conservative values of responsibility and protection of life naturally lend themselves to good behaviour in a crisis. Many conservative leaders such as Mike DeWine of Ohio have had their reputations hugely enhanced from their handling of the crisis. The issue is that Fox News specifically has made a string of serious journalistic errors in its reporting and that this has impacted their viewers, regardless of their own political views. Hopefully they don’t cost too many lives.