EverettGriz said:
Fair enough. But death rates aside, we know for certain what happens with this virus if the curve is not flattened: hospitals become overwhelmed. If there are no beds in the hospital, what do we do with the everyday concerns which require immediate care: heart attacks, strokes, car accidents, appendicitis, etc? THAT is the real issue the stay at home order attempted — rather successfully it seems for those states who implemented it — to eliminate.
We also know what happens when 35% of the economy disappears this quarter and 20%-30% become unemployed. Maybe you don't, but many people do. US GNP was almost $22 Trillion for the 4th quarter of 2019. 35% of that is about $8 Trillion. That amount could buy alot of things. 8,000,000,000,000. Divided by 100,000 deaths. That's $80 million per person, per quarter. I don't mean to be harsh, and don't anyone to die, but how much is a life worth to society. We send people to war. We allow people to drive cars and have risky jobs. You math whizzes should check my math and methodology.
Bozeman/Gallatin, with cases in the State, has 1 person hospitalized.
MT has 21 people hospitalized in the whole state.
Missoula had about 255 empty and available beds, according to an article last month.
"While acknowledging that testing capacity for COVID-19 in Montana is not unlimited, Gov. Steve Bullock said Friday there’s been sufficient inventory of critical materials to test everyone in the state who should be tested." April 3 Missoulian.
""Bozeman Deaconess and Bozeman Health Big Sky Medical Center have surge plans to meet that possible demand, Hill said, including 40 ventilators and 10 more coming soon." Quote from above post.
"Officials had estimated that 140,000 hospital beds might be needed to treat coronavirus patients. Only about 18,500 were in use by week’s end."
"To stave off a catastrophe, New York might need up to 140,000 hospital beds and as many as 40,000 intensive care units with ventilators."
"In yet another sign that the worst of the predictions had not yet come to pass, the Javits Center, the convention center where Mr. Cuomo offered his worrisome assessment, was treating only 300 patients. The rest of its roughly 2,500 beds were empty."
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/10/nyregion/new-york-coronavirus-hospitals.html?searchResultPosition=2
"But the number of intensive care beds being used declined for the first time in the crisis, to 4,908, according to daily figures released on Friday. And the total number hospitalized with the virus, 18,569, was far lower than the darkest expectations."
https://montana.maps.arcgis.com/apps/MapSeries/index.html?appid=7c34f3412536439491adcc2103421d4b