Guest post by Larry C. Johnson

The panic surrounding the Corona pandemic is real, not imagined. But the source of the panic comes from ignorance rather than the alleged lethality of Corona. I understand why the average person with no medical training or background will hear the various shrill media reports and assume that everyone who tests positive will soon be on death’s door.

But that is not the truth. The data that is being reported so fat shows that only 12% of those who tested positive were admitted to a hospital in New York. And only 20% of that number were admitted subsequently to an ICU.

While that number is not astronomical, it still creates significant problem because ICU beds represent only a small fraction of the Hospital beds available. Take the Bronx Care Hospital Center as an example. It has a total of 415 beds, but only 26 ICU beds and 11 Coronary Care beds (the Coronary Care beds can be used as ICU beds). In other words, only 9% of the beds have the infrastructure and the nursing staff to support ventilators. If we use that number as a benchmark, NYC has a total of 2139 ICU beds.

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The real problem is the lack of nurses qualified and trained to work in an ICU environment. You can deploy 5000 ventilators but there are not enough nurses and Respiratory Therapy techs available to operate and maintain these machines. Respiratory Therapy techs are unsung heroes because they are the ones who actually make the machines run. The tubes connecting the patient to the vent must be checked every hour and changed out every shift. It is this human factor that is at the breaking point even if only 3000 ICU beds are needed in New York City. Ford or Boeing cannot mass produce these professionals.

I think there is a widespread belief that the U.S. Government–the CDC in particular–has a good grasp on the number of infections and patients. But that does not appear to be true if the same methodology being used to count Influenza is being used for Corona.