Forbes reports that several regions are at minimal ICU capacity:
Jackson, Mississippi—the state’s capital—has “zero” ICU beds available, while the rest of the state has “very few,” State Health Officer Dr. Thomas Dobbs said.
Tulsa health officials announced Tuesday night that the city had run out of ICU beds…
Ed Yong makes a terrifying point:
Here’s a thing I want everyone to understand.
There is a roughly 12-day lag between rising cases rising hospitalizations.
So the 1.5 million (!!!) confirmed cases from the last 2 weeks have not yet factored into stories about packed emergency rooms. https://t.co/JID98tWjbt pic.twitter.com/3DNeiX2esb
— Ed Yong (@edyong209) November 15, 2020
We need to think about lags.
- Deaths lag ICU admissions.
- ICU admissions lag hospitalizations.
- Hospitalizations lag diagnostic test results.
- Diagnostic test results lag infections.
If no one is infected today, we won’t see much change in trends on hospitalizations, ICU admissions and deaths until the first week of December.
Election day infections are starting to hit the hospitals now. On November 3rd, Election Day, there were 86,000+ diagnosed cases. On November 15th, a Sunday which is usually a “light” day, there were 139,000+ diagnosed cases. We are building a huge bolus of need that has yet to actualized. That need will be arriving on a system that is already at capacity.
We’re going to be entering a dark period for the next several weeks. We need to drive down future ICU demand. That means masking up. That means not mixing with people outside of our households. We’re entering the suck. We can only reduce the duration of the suck.
