It is unsustainable (effort grows with epidemic size). We need measures that while painful for all will slow social contact - cancelling public gatherings, paid sick leave, working from home, and the like. Social distancing is the general name for these interventions.
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And we need to stop feeling sheepish about it and just realize that some places (Italy, Iran) are in crisis, and some are very likely in the days before crisis, a crisis that will be less bad if we slow down the virus.
#flattenthecurve to reduce peak demand on health careShow this thread -
The 1918 analogies have been discussed a lot and are correect. Flattening the curve reduces health care load, delays risk for everyone, and reduces total epidemic size. Here are some data from a paper we submitted to
@medrxivpreprint and is awaiting clearance. Led by@ruoranepiShow this thread -
with
@megan_b_murray@cmyeaton Eric Toner, Qi Tan. The link to full document will be on last tweet as I want to replace it with a more permanent one.Show this thread -
We looked at the epidemics in Wuhan and Guangzho and their ICU and hospital bed use vs US capacity. Summary: Wuhan's peak critical case load per capita was equal to the total number of ICU beds per capita in the US -- a similar experience to Wuhan would fill our ICU with COVID
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Here's the graph. Gray lines show US capacities for ICU and hospital bedspic.twitter.com/z8HBPXk6DT
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Guangzho intervened much earlier in their epidemic, and had a MUCH smaller peak demand. Note different scalepic.twitter.com/51vtTDbQNr
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My takeaways: 1) early intervention spares the health system from intense stress -- like Philly vs. St. Louis. 2) Early intervention means before it feels bad. Guangzho intervened when they had 7 confirmed cases & 0 deaths. Wuhan's came when they had 495 confirmed cases, 23 dead
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3) We will not intervene as intensely as China, making speed even nore important. 4) Slowing transmission did not immediately relieve health care burden. People take a long time (weeks) to get really sick, so the peak burden trailed peak transmission by weeks esp in Wuhan
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Here is a link to the preprint on my dropbox. Will replace with
@MedArXiv or Harvard DASH when these clearhttps://www.dropbox.com/s/e7hj97y73ym2g68/Inpatient%20ICU%20beds%20needs%20for%20COVID-19%20medRxiv.pdf?dl=0 …Show this thread -
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