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Comment by jimhefferon | Hacker News Reader

> It also estimates that the UK will not run out of ICU beds in the process.

That'd be wonderful. But, doesn't that conflict with what we saw actually happen in Italy?

Not exactly.

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._

The tests have pretty high false negative rates. https://twitter.com/cynthiaccox/status/1242868006293843971/p...

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.

deaths are not a reliable metric at all. old and sick people are far more susceptible.

New York is close to getting there, too.

Florence Italy was home to Hug A Chinese National Day during the Chinese New Year when many Chinese people are allowed to travel globally.

Hopefully fewer visited the UK and even fewer had close contact with the locals.

> Hug A Chinese National Day

A rational person can't possibly believe that this is the cause of their troubles, even if there were such a thing.

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.

Proof: https://www.westernjournal.com/italian-mayor-starts-hug-chin...

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