OK, a few things, since the narrative has had to change from “we are all going to die” to “it’s not about the fatalities, it’s about the burden on the healthcare system”; let’s talk about #coronavirus hospitalizations; or rather let’s talk about how you need to talk about hospitalizations.
If you are going to talk about hospitalization, you have to include a few things: type of treatment provided, duration of stay; and you should probably add to that the patients’ conditions upon discharge.
In these early weeks of the virus hitting the US, when hospitals have not yet been over-burdened by severe cases, mild cases that do not, in fact, warrant hospitalization may be getting admitted to hospital. People confirmed to have the virus may also be hospitalized more for the purpose of quarantining them than because they truly need inpatient care. And yes, we need to know how long they were there, and whether or not they were clinically recovered from the virus upon discharge, or simply no longer in need of treatment.
In the UK, they have started to turn people away who have tested positive for #Covid19, and whom they previously admitted to hospital; telling them they should recover at home. They are not doing this because they ARE over-burdened, but because they are being selective in order to avoid becoming over-burdened with patients who do not truly require inpatient care.
The percentages of ICU admissions and fatalities correlated with age and chronic illness in the US are more or less consistent with the global patterns; but there is an inconsistently higher percentage of younger people being hospitalized in the US. That either indicates that the virus acts one way everywhere else in the world, and another way in America, OR it means that America is hospitalizing more patients than necessary.
Hospitalization of younger people is higher in the US, but ICU admissions and fatalities for this age group are on par with available figures elsewhere.
Finally, if you are genuinely worried about over-burdening the healthcare system, then do not #lockdown the entire society, close the economy, and create a massive demand for federal relief funds that competes with the needs of the healthcare sector. Because of the lockdown in the US, $1.4 trillion of the $2 trillion relief package did NOT go to hospitals. There is no world in which lockdowns make any sense.