The Biology and Immunology Corner

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Germany had over 23000 ICUs of which I suspect* around 6000 were in use.

I have no idea why Germany had so many ICUs, I suspect it was a hold over from the cold war since Germany would have been the main battlefield had it come to a war.


*extrapolated from the number of UK ICUs in use because I see no reason to assume that Germany normally has much higher number of patients who need them.

The official numbers I've seen are a bit dated (from 2017, published by the statistical government agency) and listed 28,000 ICUs of which 79% were in use. (quite severe influenza wave in 2017/2018 with an estimated number of deaths of 25,000, so probably more ICUs were in use than in other years).

A new register was started a couple of days ago, so better data on todays situation will be available in the next days as all intensive care departments will participate and report the number of ICUs overall, the number in use and the number of corona-infected persons already in intensive care.
 
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with ICU’s being clogged up, can more of the equipment be automated for use in future outbreaks. They did this very successfully with defibrillators, you now see them in every village and places of work in some countries. Can flu-ventilators be more automated and distributed in the community ? Too late this time around but it won’t be the last.
 
I’m sure this has nothing to do with that rather fact less article

“ Larry Romanoff is a retired management consultant and businessman. He has held senior executive positions in international consulting firms, and owned an international import-export business. He has been a visiting professor at Shanghai’s Fudan University, presenting case studies in international affairs to senior EMBA classes. Mr. Romanoff lives in Shanghai and is currently writing a series of ten books generally related to China and the West.”
 
Things just got real for us. We've been self isolating for a week but have felt somewhat protected doing our shopping because there were no confirmed cases in Napa. Not any longer. The first was just reported. 😱

Going outside to garden in order to get my mind off this for a while.
 
Very few people here are wearing masks, we have been advised that they are not particularly useful yet the advice from the Chinese has been to definitely use masks. Has it been discussed here already?

Same advice here but I no longer believe it to be true. I don't think it will stop you getting the illness but it will be less severe.

With a N95 you'll still get some air coming in from the edges, around the side. But some will be filtered out. So you'll start off will a lower viral load.
 
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