Self-quarantine day #7

Woke up to this on my twitter feed and it made me so sad. Army trucks in Bergamo, Italy transport dead bodies because the local crematoriums and cemeteries are at capacity.

We have 785 cases in Australia right now. Two weeks ago we only had 63 cases. If cases keep increasing by 20% each day (the current average) then in another two weeks it will be 10,078 cases.

When people say coronavirus is only slightly more deadly than the seasonal flu, they are focusing on the wrong numbers. Australia's current fatality rate (using numbers from this site) is 0.9%, the fatality rate from the seasonal flu (at least in the US) is something like 0.1%.

But consider - Australia has around 2,200 ICU beds. According to Chinese data, around 5% of positive tested patients will require ICU care. For Australia, our ICU beds will be at capacity when there are 44,000 confirmed cases and on a current 20% growth rate that will happen in 22 days i.e. by around 11 April.

Hopefully with the social distancing measures people are now starting to take, that rate of increase will slow down so that our hospitals have more time. Note that, once our hospitals are incapacitated, it means that people with other medical conditions in this country will probably not receive the attention or treatment they need. Effectively, our healthcare sector will collapse, and that is probably why Italy's fatality rate for coronavirus is 8.3% (just under ten times ours, and way over any other country's).

That is probably a more informative number to focus on because it tells us what we should do now. Social distancing measures are less about stopping the individual from catching the disease, but stopping the spread so we don't end up like countries such as Italy.

So, in terms of priorities I think they would be -

1. stopping the spread aka flattening the curve
2. making sure our hospitals are prepared
3. helping households and businesses who otherwise may not financially survive this shock

Normal life will be disrupted for a lot of people and for a very long time (they say it'll probably be 12-18 months for a vaccine), but this is a global pandemic. Governments and institutions may be slow to respond, but as individuals we have the agency to choose what action we take today.

But hopefully everyone reading this already knows this!! Hopefully I just sound like another blah blah non-expert blah-blahing. Take care errybody!