It's amazing how many people copy-paste knowledge without doing the most basic logical checks on it.
For example, nobody yet explained to me how flattening the curve is gonna make much difference when say NYC has 3,000 ventilators, and the average time on a ventilator is 20 days. If 1/100 of NYC's 8 million population need a ventilator that'd still be 80,000 ventilators needed.
So flattening would reduce the deaths to 74,000 instead of 77,000?
[To be clear I'm not saying this math is exact. But I am saying I am owed the actual math by people who want me to change my life over it]
The improvement isn't quite that high, because people sick enough to need a ventilator are often going to die even if they get one, but I agree with your point that increasing medical capacity is the high-leverage play here.
For example, nobody yet explained to me how flattening the curve is gonna make much difference when say NYC has 3,000 ventilators, and the average time on a ventilator is 20 days. If 1/100 of NYC's 8 million population need a ventilator that'd still be 80,000 ventilators needed.
So flattening would reduce the deaths to 74,000 instead of 77,000?
[To be clear I'm not saying this math is exact. But I am saying I am owed the actual math by people who want me to change my life over it]