Quarantining an entire country, closing schools and shops, and canceling sports seasons and elections can seem like extreme measures. But looking at the images of nurses exhausted from working tirelessly amid the coronavirus pandemic helps explain why decisions like these can save lives.
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In recent weeks, the importance of “flattening the curve” (or flatenning the curve) of the rate at which infections occur with this new coronavirus that affects the respiratory system and has a higher mortality rate among older people and those with pre-existing medical conditions.
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That phrase seeks to raise awareness about how crucial it is to prevent many people from getting sick at the same time. “A rapid pandemic is terrible because, at its peak, a very large number of people will be sick at the same time. Those large numbers of sick people may exceed the capacity of the health system“explains Max Roser, a researcher from the University of Oxford who shared a graphic that illustrates this on his Twitter account.
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“A doctor can take care of 10,000 patients one after another. But a doctor cannot take care of 10,000 sick patients at the same time”, stresses.
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This logic – summarized in the illustration below – is the logic of #FlattenTheCurve:
By slowing the spread we reduce the peak and can care for all the people that need care.
[morehere:[morehere:https://t.co/uS0BPtqcA0] pic.twitter.com/6BMVqSGGSP
& mdash; Max Roser (@MaxCRoser) March 12, 2020
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It is vital that hospitals do not collapse
The image of the exhausted nurse Elena Plagiarini with her head reclined taking a break in a hospital in Cremona, Italy, confirms what Roser emphasizes.
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“We are working with the last thing we have left,” said Francesca Mangiatordi, a Plagiarini colleague who took the picture, on Italian television. “The situation will collapse, if not already,” he lamented imploring people to avoid infections in a country where until this Sunday there were just over 21,000 people infected, according to figures from the World Health Organization. It is the second, after China, where this coronavirus originated, with the highest number of registered cases.
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In a “slow pandemic,” explains Roser of Oxford University, the number of people who get sick at the same time is not that high and remains within the capacity of the healthcare system. “By slowing down the spread, the highest point (of contagion) is reduced and all people who need it can be served,” he writes. This means that if you or someone you love gets sick and needs a bed in a hospital, it is more likely that one will be available to care for them.
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That is what the authorities are looking for in part when they enact curfews so that there are no large congregations of people.
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Being able to reduce the rate at which infections occur also helps save health authorities time to do two things: better prepare ourselves, both hospitals and doctors and infrastructure; and that scientists develop the technology necessary to achieve better tests to detect the virus, drugs and, in the best case scenario, a vaccine, Roser explains.
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The situation in the USA
A 2018 report from the Johns Hopkins University Health Security Center, which cited official estimates, said that 865,000 people in the United States will be hospitalized for a moderate pandemic like those of 1957 and 1968. That number rises to 9.9 million people in a severe pandemic like the one in 1918.
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He also detailed that 64,875 people will require a mechanical ventilator in a moderate pandemic and that 742,500 will need it in a severe pandemic, a figure that far exceeds the 62,000 ventilators that intensive care units in the country have, according to the report. So the importance of not everyone getting sick at the same time.
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In the midst of the crisis, hospitals in states like New York have begun taking time-consuming measures as the numbers of infections are growing. Governor Andrew Cuomo, for example, said last week that they will evaluate canceling some surgical procedures to have greater capacity if necessary.
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