Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.), said Tuesday that the United States wont return to a functioning economy if hospitals are overrun with patients who have contracted the CCP virus.
Cheneys comments come as the White House wrestles with how soon local economies throughout the United States should be allowed to resume normal enterprise, or if returning to “normal” would create a collapse of the medical system.
“There will be no normally functioning economy if our hospitals are overwhelmed and thousands of Americans of all ages, including our doctors and nurses, lay dying because we have failed to do whats necessary to stop the virus,” Cheney wrote on Twitter Tuesday.
Dr. Anthony Fauci, Director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, was asked in a recent interview if the U.S. healthcare system is prepared with emergency equipment, like ventilators, for the number of CCP virus cases projected to flood hospitals.
“That may not be enough if we have a situation where we really have a lot of cases,” he said.
The United States has about 2.8 hospital beds per 1,000 people, while South Korea and Japan, two countries that have seemingly escaped the exponential case growth trajectory, have more than 12 hospital beds per 1,000 people.
According to the CDC, out of the daily confirmed cases of the CCP virus, 12 percent need to be hospitalized. Hospital capacity in urban centers will likely be over-burdened, given the dense populations and growing rate of infections.
Given the percentage of CCP virus cases that will need to be hospitalized, the threat to the healthcare system in urban centers poses a great challenge. For this reason New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo has called on the federal government to augment the citys healthcare system.
President Donald Trump confirmed at a recent Coronavirus Task Force press briefing that U.S. medical ship the Comfort was going to assist New York in its fight against the virus. “And we are going to be bringing that ship—thats called the Comfort. So, you have the Mercy and the Comfort. The Comfort is on the East Coast,” Trump said.
But even with the Comfort and its 1,000 beds, New York may still struggle under the weight of the number of patients.
“You will have people on gurneys in hallways,” Cuomo said at a press conference on Monday, later adding that New York would need up to 110,000 total hospital beds, around twice the number it currently has. “That is what is going to happen now if we do nothing,” he said.
Authorities nationwide are taking major steps to expand capacity, building tents and outfitting unused Read More – Source
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