In Austria, there are now around 10,000 confirmed cases, 1,000 are in hospital and 200 in critical care. The country has ca. 2,000 critical care beds and in normal times 80% are occupied on average, although less now as they've been trying to reduce occupancy by carrying out fewer surgeries, the flu season is almost over and at least one region says there are fewer accidents at the moment.
Testing of 2,000 people in the general population is underway and I've been wondering how the high false positives and negatives of the RT-PCR tests will be affecting this if, as is planned, a random sample is tested.
538 have been asking experts 2 weeks ago to estimate the no of cases in the US in 2 weeks' time. What I'm surprised by is not that their best estimates are wrong, but why almost all of them have given tiny intervals from min to max. The top 3 were clearly right in making the confidence intervals large.
Godstud wrote:@Kaiserschmarrn at this time, the King has no concubines. Just saying...
Sure thing, Godstud. It's actually hard to believe that you believe that.
AFAIK wrote:Then they follow up with this exchange;
Journalist: Taiwan
WHO guy: Can't hear you. Could you ask me a different question?
Journalist: Could you comment on Taiwan?
WHO guy: Nope. -click-
Journalist after calling back: Taiwan, though.
WHO guy: We've already spoken about China.
Most embarrassing interview I've seen in a while. I think this was the same guy who said that he'd choose to get treated in China.
Rancid wrote:Generally I believe that's true. However, it's possible some regions aren't able to get the supply of test they need. So I wonder if some regions might be buying tests to supplement?
I think in the US the bottleneck was "red tape" or unintended consequences of it. I know it's a right wing talking point but it seems to be actually true in this case, although they've now rectified it. The US is probably among the best placed to quickly increase test availability, but you are right that with the surge in demand and the expedited procedures now in place, some places might be able to circumvent the autorisation processes, find loopholes, etc. I have no idea how one would go about checking this when there's now hundreds of commercial and public labs carrying out tests. It's something news outlets should be trying to find out I think - at least by asking politicians during one of the many press conferences going on now.