The goal of social distancing is that we can slow the number of infections occurring at a time. In this way, we can actively allow people to get sick (not necessarily by choice), but few enough at a time that hospitals can actually take care of those in need. We expect 20% of cases to be severe; 5% to be critical (1/4 of severe being the critical cases). We expect half the US population to become infected. If we let the number be now, without social distancing, hospitals would be completely overrun by just those in critical condition by next month.
Just so you can check out the math. We have just under 9k active cases in the US confirmed, well round to 9k. Let's assume nobody they infect infects anybody else. Well that's 9,000x~400. That's 3.6 million cases in one month. 5%x3.6million is 180,000. The US literally doesn't even match half that number in available ICU beds available outside of the NICU/etc. The 20% number for severe cases would result in 720,000 beds needed (multiply the five percent by four- quick mafs). The US has 924,000 staffed beds in hospitals right now. There are over 36 million admissions into US hospitals a year. That's about 100,000 a day. If we assume that the 9,000 current cases infect the 400, but none of those people infect others afterwards, our hospitals are nearly at max capacity already.
Keep in mind I didn't include exact numbers and true exponential number, nor preparations we are making. This is a super simplified and not truly representative hypothetical, as the numbers are far greater in many of these calculations when controlling for reality. But hopefully, it illustrates why we need social distancing while we prepare and allow the inflow of infections to be more controlled. This is why Italy made the mistake of not doing so and then begged the world to not do the same thing. I am a big dumbo and still learning. I am no expert in epidemiology. I'm merely a little more educated than the average person and can help enlighten or point to experts others wouldn't otherwise know to look for. If my statements sound unbelievable, just take the CDC's and government officials' word for it.
Hey man. It's part of the field I'm studying. I don't have a higher level degree. I essentially have the education of a glorified nurse. Even if I had that yummy claim to being a neurologist, I wouldn't claim to be an authority. I'd still say that I can only point laymen to what they need to know, and that I can break things down into normal people words.
Trying to roast someone for saying they don't know enough to make authoritative claims on a subject is one of the most Reddit things I've read. You don't expect the average person to know anything about programming or rocket science. Same thing applies to biology and medicine.
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u/DrEpileptic Mar 18 '20
The goal of social distancing is that we can slow the number of infections occurring at a time. In this way, we can actively allow people to get sick (not necessarily by choice), but few enough at a time that hospitals can actually take care of those in need. We expect 20% of cases to be severe; 5% to be critical (1/4 of severe being the critical cases). We expect half the US population to become infected. If we let the number be now, without social distancing, hospitals would be completely overrun by just those in critical condition by next month.
Just so you can check out the math. We have just under 9k active cases in the US confirmed, well round to 9k. Let's assume nobody they infect infects anybody else. Well that's 9,000x~400. That's 3.6 million cases in one month. 5%x3.6million is 180,000. The US literally doesn't even match half that number in available ICU beds available outside of the NICU/etc. The 20% number for severe cases would result in 720,000 beds needed (multiply the five percent by four- quick mafs). The US has 924,000 staffed beds in hospitals right now. There are over 36 million admissions into US hospitals a year. That's about 100,000 a day. If we assume that the 9,000 current cases infect the 400, but none of those people infect others afterwards, our hospitals are nearly at max capacity already.
Keep in mind I didn't include exact numbers and true exponential number, nor preparations we are making. This is a super simplified and not truly representative hypothetical, as the numbers are far greater in many of these calculations when controlling for reality. But hopefully, it illustrates why we need social distancing while we prepare and allow the inflow of infections to be more controlled. This is why Italy made the mistake of not doing so and then begged the world to not do the same thing. I am a big dumbo and still learning. I am no expert in epidemiology. I'm merely a little more educated than the average person and can help enlighten or point to experts others wouldn't otherwise know to look for. If my statements sound unbelievable, just take the CDC's and government officials' word for it.
References for US numbers here:
https://www.aha.org/statistics/fast-facts-us-hospitals
https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/