The state of the coronavirus two weeks ago in California
About two weeks ago, March 1st, I was lunching with a very good friend of mine to celebrate her birthday. After our usual catch-up and general girl-talk, our conversation inevitably turned to the topic of Coronavirus. I was eager to get her take on the situation. I should preface this with the fact that she’s an accomplished healthcare worker in the SF Bay Area – regularly performing open-heart surgery, you guys! Needless to say, I valued her insight.
So when she knowingly said, “the next week or so will be telling,” my ears perked up. She began to explain some of the measures her hospital was starting to take. She noted things the media was already covering, like the limited supply of masks, and concerns on having enough for the patients who actually would need them (a preventative measure aimed to protect healthcare staff). But, then she went on to describe further complications and risks. Because COVID-19 is known for upper respiratory health complications, there was a serious concern about how much equipment (think respirators and who knows else) was available.
Moreover, the number of healthcare workers who are actually equipped to run the equipment was in question. She noted that hospitals might temporarily discontinue non-essential “elective surgeries.” This includes more than just plastic surgery patients, like cardiovascular patients as well. The goal being, of course, to ensure enough beds were made available to accommodate not only serious cases of COVID-19 but the general public in need of emergency care.
The state of coronavirus currently
Fast-forward to now, in the last 24 hours, the WHO has officially declared Covid-19 a pandemic, Tom Hanks and Rita Wilson have been diagnosed, and social gatherings have been canceled left and right. The media is blowing up with constant coverage. Everything ranging from news, blogs, op-eds, to social media posts, and memes galore, I’ve found the information is offered up in such a way that blends fact, opinion, and contradicting information.
Me, with a Meyer’s Brigg personality type known for truth-seeking, I felt an overwhelming need to discern fact from hype. I think we all know that Covid-19 is a concern, but my open question was, “to what degree?”. Perspective is what I needed. Being a numbers person, I started looking up stats. And I figure, If I’m nerding out looking up these facts and figures, I may as well distill my findings here with you.
TLDR; social-distancing is NOT an over-reaction.
Stats and Facts: The Numbers Don’t Lie
- According to the American Hospital Association, there are 6,146 hospitals in the US.
- Do you know how many people there are in the US? As of today, March 11th, United Statues Census Bureau counts a population of 323,383,423 in the US. That means that a given hospital theoretically supports a population of approx 50,000 residents, and this is assuming that the ratio of the population to hospitals was evenly distributed and proximity is equal. But, I found a graph that speaks to some of that (see below).
- The AHA estimates that there are about 924K staffed hospital beds in the US and 36,353,946 hospital admissions annually.
- As I’m typing this, ABC News Dr. Alok Patel quotes there are roughly 70,000 ventilators available across the US.
For perspective, here’s what that actually looks like
Graph source: me and my google sheets
This graph illustrates a few things….
- Staffed hospital beds are so few that it doesn’t even show up as a blip on my fancy column graph! (I’m sure a data visualization expert could help me with that, but I think this gets the point across sufficiently).
- I never realized how few hospitals there were in proportion to the US population. Mind you, the hospital metric in this chart includes federal, for-profit, non-profit, and psych hospital numbers. So, the actual number of hospitals available to the general public is even lower.
- There are 70K ventilators to 327M persons in the US…. how?
Proximity to hospitals could become problematic if the spread reaches rural communities.
Okay, okay, so we know the threat of coronavirus spread is very real. But, the question is, how real does the US need to get?
Turns out very real.
Many of you have probably seen Vox’s recent article, “How canceled events and self-quarantines save lives, in one chart.” It includes a very awesome chart that succinctly outlines the overarching issue related to healthcare capacity vs. new cases emerging. It is basically a great illustration of what my friend expressed to me weeks ago.
Image courtesy of Vox, source via CDC
Taking the above one step further, I attempted to quantify. In other words, if we do nothing, what could that actually mean for the US?
Graph source: me and my google sheets
If my legend isn’t clear, let me break it down:
- The dotted red line illustrates how many cases of COVID-19 could occur in the US if we followed the trends in Wuhan. The 2x growth rate every 6 days is based on learnings from statnews.com and the lancet.com. Keep in mind, the starting number I used is based on reported cases in the US, which we know is severely underreported due to the delays in the availability of testing.
- The dark red line basically says, of the number of coronavirus cases, let’s assume only 10% of those cases result in actual hospitalizations.
- The gray line is how many staffed beds we have in the US; similarly, the blue line represents the number of respirators.
- I should note that I adjusted to log scale which basically means it took the exponential growth and plotted it in a straight line.
If we do nothing, our hospitals could risk being overloaded with coronavirus hospitalizations as early as the end of May – yikes!
Thankfully, it seems the US, albeit slowly, is beginning to mobilize. Or, in this case,….immobilize? It’s such a weird time, but I’m encouraged to see some of the steps we’re taking forward. While social-distancing, event cancellations, and economic fallout can feel like an extreme, it’s only temporary. I believe the long-term benefit of these short-term inconveniences is worth it. That said if you gain nothing, but a headache from the numbers and graphs in this post, let me leave you with these few points.
1) This is not about your individual risk; it is about the overall systemic risk.
For further context, I highly suggest this read by Mark Manson. His ability to break-down in layman’s terms is inspiring and always entertaining.
2) Number’s don’t lie; social-distancing is not an over-reaction.
This isn’t a partisan issue. It’s quite literally a capacity issue.
3) COVID-19 doesn’t discriminate, so neither should the public.
I think this should go without saying, but apparently it needs to be said given the number of racist things that I’ve learned people are saying and doing to one another.
4) I know this post has nothing to do with Element + Mineral, so what business do I have writing on this topic?
Probably none. But in all fairness, data analyses are part of the job if you are doing any kind of marketing in tech. Plus, I intentionally called this the Raw Blog, a place to get real. Today, COVID-19 is very real. And this is the first thing I’ve written in a while. If it gets me out of my blogging slump and is in anyway helpful, I’ll take it.
