As we know, Covid-19 is extremely infectious and the exponential spread HAS NOT SLOWED. As the Director of the WHO said, "This is not a drill, This is a time to pull out all the stops.



The European Society of Intensive Care Medicine is reporting a 10% ICU rate and issued a word of warning, while China has confirmed nearly 14% of Covid-19 patients have had SEVERE disease requiring hospitalization with over 6% being critical (respiratory failure, septic shock, and/or multiple organ failure/dysfunction.) This is based on 55,924 laboratory-confirmed cases. How does the U.S healthcare system plan on dealing with the vast amounts of citizens in critical condition when we have less than 3 hospital beds for every 1000 people? Do we even have enough masks for healthcare workers? Test kits? Soap?



Almost 20% of deaths in South Korea happened while people were waiting to be hospitalized, yet they have over 3 times the amount of beds per person than America does. People already have little faith in the healthcare system, what will this disease do to our country's moral in the long run?

Why aren't we taking proactive measures, seeing how this is playing out in Italy?

Why aren't we shutting down schools temporarily to stop the spread between children?

Why is it so hard to get tested?

Why aren't we shutting down major tourist locations temporarily?

Why aren't we shutting down restaurants temporarily or AT LEAST advising people not to go out to eat.

Think about the sheer amount of dirty dishes a young waitress touches in one shift, and how little time there is to wash your hands between serving food.

Are we just planning on waiting until it's too late to implement retroactive measures that will be useless to us in the future?

Are we just going to wait until there aren't enough hospital beds to treat patients?

How many people have to die of this disease before we take it seriously?

Are we going to be able to send comparable amounts of funding to each state that needs it, or will New York, California and Florida (as always) be the first to get massive amounts of federal money?



Let's just take the lesson given to us by China and Italy, especially Lombardy, where 10% of healthcare officials have tested positive for the virus already, and doctors are sleeping in their offices.

Dr. Massimo Galli, head of infectious disease at Milan’s Sacco Hospital, told Sky TG24. “This epidemic is on a scale that is larger than anyone could have thought, imagined or prevented.”



Now that we see what's happening, let's take active measures right now to keep our citizens safe and let our state be an example, and in turn our country.



Thank you.



SOURCES:



COVID-19 INFECTION STUDY https://arxiv.org/ftp/arxiv/papers/2002/2002.03268.pdf



1/5 INFECTED REQUIRE HOSPITALIZATION https://medium.com/@amwren/forget-about-the-death-rate-this-is-why-you-should-be-worried-about-the-coronavirus-890fbf9c4de6

https://www.who.int/docs/default-source/coronaviruse/who-china-joint-mission-on-covid-19-final-report.pdf

10% ICU RATE https://twitter.com/marcelsalathe/status/1235662457261023232

13.8% SEVERE/6.1% CRITICAL IN CHINA https://www.who.int/docs/default-source/coronaviruse/who-china-joint-mission-on-covid-19-final-report.pdf

HOSPITAL BEDS PER 1000 PEOPLE https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_OECD_countries_by_hospital_beds

4/22 KOREAN DEATHS FROM WAITING TO BE HOSPITALIZED https://n.news.naver.com/article/005/0001294063

NOROVIRUS OUTBREAK CONNECTED TO SICK RESTAURANT WORKERS https://wwwnc.cdc.gov/eid/article/18/10/12-0833_article