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The US is likely about 11 to 14 days behind Italy in terms of medical infrastructure collapse.

We're that many days behind in raw case numbers. We have a lot more capacity than Italy overall, and our larger hospitals are prepped for mass shootings which means they have procedures in place for a sudden influx of patients who need ventilators.

Story from a couple years back about that last point: https://epmonthly.com/article/not-heroes-wear-capes-one-las-...

> What he came up with was that if you have two people who are roughly the same size and tidal volume, you can just double the tidal volume and stick them on Y tubing on one ventilator.

Would this help increase the number of covid-19 patients that could be treated? Or do they not require ventilators? I wonder if the study they mentioned about it was ever completed?

COVID-19 hospitalizations are mostly for respiratory failure, which can be treated with ventilators. I don't actually know about that study though.

Super late update: I found at least a pilot study that shows that the technique is promising. There's also some evidence that this is being used in the current crisis but I don't know how reliable these sources are: https://twitter.com/alandrummond2/status/1240008793167192066 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uClq978oohY

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