Italy has never run out of ICU beds. There have been sporadic and garbled reports of temporary shortages in Lombardy specifically, alleviated by patient transfers and ward conversions, and some of those reports were contradictory (e.g. doctors or mayors saying they were rationing care but other more senior healthcare leaders saying they weren't).
The UK had a hospital that hit capacity temporarily but it only lasted 12 hours before transfers reduced the pressure again.
We'll be seeing a lot of activity like that in the next weeks - reports that hospitals are full, then they stop being full as more capacity is added or patients are rebalanced onto other hospitals. The assumption of total ICU exhaustion seems to have been based on the assumption of uniform case growth everywhere which isn't happening, and perhaps also an inability to quickly add capacity.
Not necessarily. If transmissibility is high, you could be seeing close to the peak.
The data out of NY that makes me most suspicious of this new model is actually the 72% negative rate on tests. I would expect that to be a lot lower. But that's just a gut feeling.
Half of those 72% may have had it three weeks ago and are a-ok now. Without testing for antibodies, all we can say is they do not _currently actively have an infection._
It does indeed, or what we are seeing in New York. I'm very skeptical of this, though it would of course be great news if it was true. I can't help but have whiplash from the fact that the UK seems to have gone from an attitude of we're going to be fine, to we're all going to die, to now it's going to be fine again.
Edit: I think it is important to keep in mind that Italy's deaths per day are still going up. The growth has slowed and hopefully we are about to see the peak but it still hasn't come. Most western countries are on the same growth rate as Italy, there is no reason right now to think we won't see something similar happen all over the world.
The number of new case per day in Italy has stabilized at 5000 to 6000 per day.
Date Cases New Cases
March 10 9172 1797
March 11 10149 977
March 12 12462 2313
March 13 15113 2651
March 14 17660 2547
March 15 21157 3497
March 16 24747 3590
March 17 27980 3233
March 18 31506 3526
March 19 35713 4207
March 20 41035 5322
March 21 47021 5986
March 22 53578 6557
March 23 59138 5560
March 24 63927 4789
March 25 69176 5249
March 26 74386 5210
New cases isn't a good metric because of how testing can change. Deaths is more reliable metric to be used when prevalence is high, as it is in Italy and now the US.
And in the case of Italy, you would expect the new case rate to outpace itself for a long while as testing is ramped up, but even with increased testing the new case level is leveling off. This indicates an already infected populace that has since recovered.
I agree it’s hard to believe such a thing existed and undoubtedly accelerated the spread of the Wuhan Virus. Many lives could have been saved if Italy embraced social distancing instead of virtue signalling.
That'd be wonderful. But, doesn't that conflict with what we saw actually happen in Italy?