Illinois Department of Public Health has hospitalization data (ICU beds & ventilators) for various regions in the state.
Hospitals are below capacity.
In the beginning, there were a lot of urgent pleas for ventilators. Then, reports that some patients simply needed oxygen. “It’s more like altitude sickness than ARDS”
I have not seen anything recent in the news or on podcasts discussing the ventilator issue. If anyone has a link, please post.
I’m on my third week since Day One of symptoms of C19 infection. Sense of smell is still not normal. For example, i cannot smell the coffee brewing in the morning or when I pour myself a cup. But if I put my nose very close to the cup, I register a whisper of coffee. So weird.
Guessing here, but if many of them are in nursing homes, they possibly keep them there, esp if they have a health directive and don’t want things like ventilators.
My mom stayed home all through end stage cancer. It’s what she wanted, but the doctor told her early on it was her choice and had her fill out a form with specifics of what she wanted and didn’t.
Otherwise, it would be nice if they would specify what the percentage means on the state site. When it gets down to race they mention not having a lot of that data so I find it hard to believe they wouldn’t do the same with age and hospitalization. I also know from the doctors I know working with Covid (adults) that they tell me they see all ages, plenty of them young.
@roycroftmom The only time I hear the statistics on the demographics of the cases is the briefing from the Public Health officer. 90% had co-morbidities. The average age is 80. 50% lived in nursing homes or other congregate living facilities.
Yet the news shows the 45 year old father of 8. (He was morbidly obese from the photos). They highlight the rare teen or 20 something victim.
I know the ‘news’ is mostly concerned with keeping eyeballs on the TV, rather than providing an accurate representation of what the virus is doing. They show the overcrowded hospitals in New York, not the almost empty hospitals across the rest of the country. I should know better than to watch.
4151 of 8244 deaths in NJ were in long term care facilities.
You got me, that is indeed “over half”. 50.35 to be exact. I sure feel so much better now. So only 49.65 % were not. I stand entirely corrected and am ready to throw open the doors – who needs restrictions when those odds are so much in our favor?
I’m not sure why this is surprising or wrong. The news only shows places getting forest fires, not all the places in the country that are doing just fine. Same with hurricanes, snow storms, terrorist attacks, floods, bridges or buildings collapsing, famines, droughts, well, you name it.
It’s called the news, but what it means is reporting on things that are outside the realm of normal so folks can see what is happening outside of their corner of the planet. Without it there’s an incredible amount we wouldn’t know about. With it we’re far more aware.
It’s definitely important to watch or read more than one source because there’s only so much time and space. I get to know far more from watching BBC World News than I do any US National News, but if I only watch BBC I miss what’s happening in the nation.
Then there’s slant - that goes back eons - but when you want the news to show a slow day in Mayberry because that’s what’s happening there… that’s not what news does nor has it ever done that. Even in Mayberry the news will talk about what’s outside of normal.
Creekland posts the chance someone who tests positive will be hospitalized, in Pennsylvania:
So, if I test positive I probably won’t die but I have a ten percent chance of being hospitalized? One in ten chance of being hospitalized (and not for two minutes, either; I’d be there for days). This does not seem to be a mild disease to me.
In my county, which does not give hospitalization rates by age group, the deaths are distributed as follows:
My point, Creekland, was that the news isnt accurately showing what is happening, if most deaths are occurring in nursing homes or otherwise among the elderly. It isn’t normal for those deaths to be happening either. I understand the primary purpose is to sell papers or airtime, but the media does an enormous disservice by misrepresenting the situation. Our hospitals now announce every single day they are at 10% capacity and people who are sick should come in. Many are still too scared to go due to the NYC stories
The reason this matters is because we should, as a matter of public policy, target our actions to have a rational relationship to the problem we are trying to solve. If most deaths are in nursing homes, should we really close day care centers? Maybe we should just limit who can enter a nursing home instead. Or ask those who visit both to stop doing so. Or some other targeted approach.
You do understand, Cardinal Fang that the NY metro area is the exception, not the rule? I am sure there will be many future studies of what went wrong in NY. But to use the tornado analogy, the storm hit you but not others, at least not yet, so others aren’t necessarily going to hide in their basements.
Agree if 10% of people who were infected with COVID were hospitalized, that would be far from mild, but the stat is not for all people infected, it’s for those who tested positive. Depending on testing protocols in each area, the number of infections that are actually confirmed by a test can be very low and only represent a small fraction of the people who were infected - and they also represent the most serious cases.
Around here it wasn’t until very recently that tests are becoming more generally available so only the very severe cases got tested.
IOW, these #s don’t imply 10% of all people in your age group who get C19 will be hospitalized. Many won’t be sick enough to be tested and even more will be asymptomatic.
Not minimizing how severe it is for certain people, just putting the figures into perspective.
"The small town of Gray Rock, California, awoke today to no smoky skies. The residents report that the old church in the middle of town has not been reduced to ashes in just one hour. No one fled with just the clothes on their backs.
“We move now to the story that’s gripping the nation, five-year-old Tiffany Smedley, who is not stuck in a well.”
Anyone who looks to TV news as an accurate sampling of what is happening around the country and the world is misunderstanding how TV news works. If it bleeds, it leads. This is the same industry that shows 500 people protesting the shutdowns with guns as if they’re representative, when polls show the vast, vast majority of the population supports the shutdowns.
Current numbers as of 10am this morning in Maryland.
28,163 positive cases
1338 deaths
From just nursing homes:
Patients:
4342 positive cases
793 deaths
Caregivers:
1926 cases
11 deaths
59 % of Maryland’s deaths are from nursing homes. These are the people that should have been better protected. This never lifting lockdown hasn’t worked to protect our most vulnerable.
83% of Maryland’s deaths are individuals over 60. I’m sure most have extenuating conditions but they won’t break them out that way yet.
It’s time to protect the vulnerable and let everyone else work towards herd immunity. This virus isn’t going to just disappear.
And you do understand the New York area is the exception because more people got infected there, not because there is something magic about the Hudson River that makes people who get covid near there sicker than people who get infected elsewhere?
We’re a little bit better about treating covid now than we were two months ago, but not much better. If everyone forgot completely about covid and did what they were doing in February, covid would rip through your area, like it’s now ripping through New York, New Jersey and Pennsylvania, and your area would see just as many deaths as those areas are seeing now. The virus is just as virulent now as it was then.
These numbers of cases also closely mirrors Maine’s population as a whole. A large portion of Maine’s population falls between the ages of 45-65 also. That’s exactly where I’d expect the most cases.
If you manage to “protect” people over 60, plus people under 60 who are obese, hypertense or have other conditions that make them vulnerable, and let everyone else get infected, you wouldn’t have herd immunity because you wouldn’t have infected enough of the herd. You’d have “protected” over half of the herd, and there’s no herd immunity for a very contagious disease if less than half of the herd is still uninfected. That’s just arithmetic.
Also, what is the the plan to segregate the population into two halves, the vulnerable and the not, without having the not vulnerable interact with the vulnerable? What about kids who live with their grandparents? What about adult children who live with their parents? What about hypertense 50-year-olds married to non-hypertense 50-year-olds? Where is the obese 40-year-old supposed to go?