The wave coming is not just a “bit bigger” than hospitals can handle
Western Australian specialists estimate that at present rate, in 45 days Coronavirus cases will fill up their entire state hospital system. Two weeks later Covid patients will also fill all the beds in the extra two copies of their entire state hospital network that haven’t been built yet.
Hospitals will need 20 times as many ventilators as they have.
“Peak need for ventilators will be over four thousands in a system where we have less than two hundred. Again, most of those needing a ventilator will die. “
Perhaps we are overreacting?
Western Australia is an example of what the rest of the West faces. There are 2.5m people here, but only 120 confirmed cases. In a state which took six years to build one hospital all we need to do is triple our hospital capacity in 6 weeks. Laughing…
The Doctors call for the immediate closure of borders. Which was impossible a few days ago, in a state that only has two sealed roads out, but is now happening on Tuesday “at 1:30pm”. (Presumably the new border guards have to drive out from Perth.) Amazing how fast the world changes once other leaders act.
Doctors want schools closed immediately and social distancing halved “at a minimum”. They warn “Social isolation measures are manifestly inadequate”.
“People will forgive the imposed hardships they may suffer but they will not forgive us if we, knowingly, do not act now to stop the demise of thousands of Western Australians.”
Hospital beds required, Western Australia, (Click to enlarge)
These dreadful numbers will not pan out, but only because the unfolding disaster will spark all the draconian lock-downs (shelter in place) and quarantine conditions I’ve been saying would come. People will do it voluntarily out of fear anyway once more stories start to hit the news.
We will slow this, and keep deaths far below these tallies. After which I expect the naysayers will pop up and mock the big numbers and tell us they were right all along. “It was nothing”. “See I told you it would peter out. ”
The Docs are not mincing words:
Almost 50 of WA’s top specialists have penned a chilling open letter to Premier Mark McGowan, warning of thousands of WA coronavirus deaths “without strong and decisive leadership”.
“Without strong action and decisive leadership, first tens, then hundreds and then thousands of vulnerable West Australians will die as a result of COVID-19 infection.
“Most of these deaths will be in the course of just a few weeks. There will be many who will become critically ill and die with hospital staff unable to do anything to prevent their demise.
“We will have colleagues who die.
“We will have nurses, business leaders, school teachers, mothers, fathers, and our grandparents who will die with us unable to do anything but watch it happen.
“We will run out of ventilators and those who need them will then die.
This modeling* estimates that if people cut their social contacts in half the total peak ventilators and hospital admissions will decrease by about six fold. Notice that the dates of the peaks stretch out by another three months with “social distancing”.
Table, model estimate of peak cases coronavirus, WA (Click to enlarge)
I still say Crush The Curve, the slow bleed is still awful. Declare War and get rid of this.
With serious social distancing the state might “only” need an extra 50 ventilators a day:
Nathan Hondros, WA Today
The list of surgeons and specialists includes many respiratory experts, but what would they know?
Prepared as well as anywhere in the world (which means “hopeless”)
The state has almost run out of testing kits. Like the US and Italy, community transmission will be expertly identified right after people turn up needing intensive care for pneumonia.
A “grand round” meeting of doctors at Fiona Stanley Hospital on Wednesday heard questions about whether transmission was already happening given the strict testing criteria.
A shortage of reagents needed for testing means only people with a fever or respiratory illness and have either returned from overseas or had close contact with a known case are eligible. Health or aged workers are also tested.
In the United States and northern Italy, the first indicator of widespread transmission was when patients started to arrive at hospital that required intensive care. That has yet to happen in WA hospitals, but if it does, by that point the disease is “out of the bag”, the FSH meeting heard.
Not so. At that point, the disease will have been “out of the bag” for one or two weeks already.
Dumb bit of code is still weeks ahead of bureaucrats. If we don’t have community spread in WA, and we did lock down, we would get rid of it. Now is exactly the time to close everything.
Whereever you live, if they are not quarantining everything, write to your politicians and media.
We must Crush the Curve.
*All models are still wrong.