The math is very clear and extremely disturbing.
The numbers certainly argue that the coronavirus has the ability to crash the U.S. healthcare system–which would leave hospitals and other healthcare facilities conducting triage among patients with serious cases of coronavirus and those with other life-threatening conditions.
The United States has about 2.8 hospital beds per 1,000 people, Dr. Liz Specht, the Associate Director of Science & Technology at the Good Food Institute, told Jim Bianco of Bianco Research.
About 65% of those beds are occupied at any given time.
If the number of people infected with the coronavirus continues to double every six days in the United States, as it has in other countries, the country will run out of available hospital beds to treat the sickest 10% to 15% of all coronavirus cases sometime in May.
Given the paucity of testing in the United States all figures are subject to revision–we simply don’t know how many people have been infected to date in the United States–but this is a terrifying estimate.
China managed to build new hospitals in Wuhan in something like 10 days. The United States could to. If Washington would decide to behave as if the coronavirus outbreak is a true emergency rather than just issuing declarations of emergency.
