The Flu, the Coronavirus,
and Hospital Beds
American Thinker,
by
James L. Swofford
Original Article
Posted By: Imright,
4/9/2020 5:31:31 AM
Did you hear about the 2017-2018 U.S. flu season? How about the 2017-18 flu season overwhelming the hospitals and creating bed and ICU bed shortages?Neither did I, but it was the worst flu season in recent years.During the 2017-2018 flu season the CDC’s preliminary estimate is that 810,000 patients were hospitalized. It is still a preliminary estimate, so that the upper range of uncertainty is 1.4 million hospitalizations due to the flu during the 2017-2018 season. That flu season also had the highest peak hospitalizations in recent years.That hospitalization peak was the highest in recent years ran from the last week of December through the third or fourth week
Reply 1 - Posted by:
Crusty_Rusty 4/9/2020 6:17:34 AM (No. 373529)
Boy, is this guy going to be in trouble later today for pointing out facts that compare the Chinese Virus to the 2017/2018 US Flu hospitalizations and death rates.
Bet he'll never be invited for cocktails in the faculty lounge again.....
35 people like this.
Reply 2 - Posted by:
The Remnants 4/9/2020 7:12:12 AM (No. 373553)
It will be interesting to see comparisons of patients occupying Navy ship Comfort on the east coast and Navy ship Mercy on the west coast in reference to: cause of hospitalizations, ICU numbers, and length of stay. Though both ships were originally intended only for overflows of patients who were not afflicted with the corona virus, recently, I read that Comfort on the east coast will take only corona virus patients.
I would think this would be a statistician's dream job and something that scholars could write about for years. ( I have never taken a statistics course in my life, so that is only a supposition on my part.)
8 people like this.
Reply 3 - Posted by:
planetgeo 4/9/2020 7:56:53 AM (No. 373596)
I taught probability & statistics for many years. Apparently, none of my students are involved in the current modeling on the corona virus, because if they were I would retroactively fail them. The statistics being used to make these extreme decisions are absurdly flawed
The fundamental assumption for statistics, and particularly for the forecasting models, is that the data collected is standardized across all reporting entities. This has clearly not been the case. I have been going daily to multiple reporting sites (some at the state and local level, as well as national and world levels) and there are huge discrepancies in detail and types of data collected as well as the protocols for determination of classification of data.
In short, these statistics are ripe for manipulation and interpretation the higher up they are assembled (local to state to national to world). It is a politician's or ideologue's dream. And the public's nightmare.
At the national level, it appears to me that the CDC is a massive failure at the development and enforcement of reporting data standards. That they are only now sending out advisories on how to classify and record COVID19 deaths is an outright admission of that failure. People should be fired and the entire mission of that agency should be completely overhauled.
51 people like this.
Reply 4 - Posted by:
jeffkinnh 4/9/2020 8:15:20 AM (No. 373618)
It seems like all these statistical reports are very weak at best. We simply do NOT have complete or even accurate data. Some reports are not even based on hard data but based on statistical estimates based on other data, similar to: We know about 1,000,000 people were sick and that about 3% of them were flu patients so the number of flu patients was 30,000. All those numbers are estimates and when you do calculations based on estimates, the outcome is uncertain. Yet these numbers are what the panic is being built on.
I have no doubt that the hospitals in NYC are very busy. However, I have to wonder when Andy Cuomo announces that "We will run out of ventilators tomorrow." if that is anywhere close to the reality or is based on projections made of estimates of estimates? Is anyone investigating the actual situations of the busiest hospitals? Not the breathless social media posts of emotional hospital workers, but sending impartial inspectors in and looking at the real numbers? When they say they are out of ventilators, are there ventilators available in other hospitals or a medical supply business within 50 miles of the hospital? If so, then they are not out of ventilators. It is common for hospitals to seek supplies outside what they have in house. We don't need a comprehensive review, just spot checks of the supposedly worst impacted hospitals. Stop asking the statistical experts who cannot provide such information and go to the sources.
13 people like this.
Reply 5 - Posted by:
ROLFNader 4/9/2020 8:24:31 AM (No. 373631)
Gonna be fun to watch the media go after Rush since he is leading the charge against government absurdity , as usual.
17 people like this.
Reply 6 - Posted by:
Red Jeep 4/9/2020 8:50:50 AM (No. 373674)
To quote MrLocks9999 from the comments of the AT article:
"Why have we shut down the entire country because of New York City and New Jersey?
As of last night, 2 States have virus deaths in the 1000s, basically New York City and New Jersey.
15 States have over 100 virus deaths but less than 1000, 2 over 500, 13 under 500
34 States have less than 100 virus deaths.
We are wrecking our country over this? Seems like we could start opening those 34 States with under a 100 deaths
27 people like this.
Reply 7 - Posted by:
dst4life 4/9/2020 9:09:19 AM (No. 373700)
#6, because what goes on in Smalltown, USA is of no consequence to the MSM. NYC and Los Angeles reign supreme. And Dims want to do away with the Electoral College. Scary thought.
20 people like this.
Reply 8 - Posted by:
dst4life 4/9/2020 9:14:56 AM (No. 373713)
Oh, and Fox News, at this moment, is featuring someone who doesn't want NYC referred to as the "epicenter" of this virus. So let's abandon reality. Let's impose great strictures on the entire country. After all, we don't want to hurt the feelings of New Yorkers.
17 people like this.
Reply 9 - Posted by:
MMC 4/9/2020 9:35:48 AM (No. 373732)
I am not a stats person- in fact, numbers really aren’t my thing.. however, with the vast concern and high numbers floated for death.. I started tracking % of death vs cases.. and the % stayed consistent.. .03 nationally.. I checked the covid19 tracker- guess what? Only .05% new cases in USA.. Michigan didn’t have an increase over night- and the Gov still wants 70 more days of dictatorship.. can’t fix potholes- but can tank an economy..
13 people like this.
Reply 10 - Posted by:
Strike3 4/9/2020 9:36:54 AM (No. 373734)
Rush is going to be on fire today. I hope he has the energy to do his show, although Mark Steyn has been doing a proper job.
12 people like this.
Reply 11 - Posted by:
planetgeo 4/9/2020 9:59:16 AM (No. 373766)
Sorry for second post, but it's very relevant for why so many of these government officials and most Democrats want to continue the lockdowns for an extended period...they are all continuing to get THEIR checks (salaries or welfare) no matter how long this goes (they think!). It's like an extended vacation with pay for them...and the added fun of watching people in the private sector (mostly R's) scrambling to survive and needing to line up for crumbs of stimulus money.
We need to DEMAND that if this goes on beyond a fixed certain date, like April 30, that ALL politicians and public sector employees will lose their income along with private sector workers. Not just deferred for future retroactive payback, but lost. And that this should be a mandatory policy for any future lockdown as well. Then we will see how seriously they take such situations.
24 people like this.
Reply 12 - Posted by:
Historybuff 4/9/2020 10:22:21 AM (No. 373802)
What is the difference? In '17 -'18 everybody with a case of the sniffles was not running to the ER to be tested.
Each visit to the ER requires the Dr. to have : One gown, one mask, one pair of gloves. Oh yeah and one test.
Why the run to the ER with the sniffles? Because of the media panic that now overwhelms the ER's.
7 people like this.
Reply 13 - Posted by:
LadyHen 4/9/2020 12:08:08 PM (No. 373980)
Yes, I remember the '17-18 flu season well. I was in the ICU in Nov '17 after contracting a kidney infection that went septic due to a stone blocking my uterer. I almost died during emergency surgery. My hospital, a huge tip top hospital, was full to the brim. I had to stay in ICU until discharge because no bed was available on a regular floor, not one bed. They were shipping out patients and setting up extra beds to accommodate the overflow. Hospita!s were overwhelmed from one coast to the other. And remember, the flu has viable authorized treatments and a known vaccine. Our son got the flu in December that year and was better in a week thanks to Tamiflu.
Covid-19 doesn't hold a candle to the '17-18 flu season.
3 people like this.
Reply 14 - Posted by:
DVC 4/9/2020 12:26:47 PM (No. 373998)
The estimates, which have not happened for the USA, were for many hundreds of thousands needing hospitalization. That would have been bad news. It didn't happen, probably due to many things done to minimize the propogation of this virus.
I have little patience for people who, after a massive effort to prevent the spread, say "See, it didn't spread, it was all a waste of time." Unfortunately, we can never know, only guess, what it WOULD HAVE DONE if we had not done massive mitigation. Since the INTENT of the mitigation effort was to reduce the number of cases by a lot, and that appears to be what it has done....why isn't that GOOD news? Seems like a win to me. We tried very hard to keep it from spreading so widely, and we have apparently succeeded to a significant degree.
Claiming that "it wouldn't have been that bad" is just unproveable, argumentative and childish. I dislike this sort of 20-20 hindsight with a double dose of "told ja so" thrown in.
If you don't get drunk and drive at 100 mph, and are not killed in a car accident - does that indicate that you should have gotten drunk and driven at 100 mph.....or that your avoidance of that risk worked?
From my view, the mitigation is working. We HAVE 'flattened the curve'. We may well have had NYC's problems all over the country without the efforts we have made, it seems very likely.
2 people like this.
Reply 15 - Posted by:
crashnburn 4/9/2020 4:07:10 PM (No. 374283)
#30, I know what you mean. In 1999, people were panicked because a lot of software only had two digits for the year, and there was going to be Armageddon on Jan 1, 2000. But, people prepared, and it was a non-event.
However, all the WFH started as a result of bad (to be generous) statistics about COVID-19. If you look at where the most cases are, they are where the population has the highest density, and the most foreign Chinese travelers. The most vulnerable are the elderly, as well as those with underlying health issues. Those are who we should be protecting, not doing a blanket shutdown.
0 people like this.
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