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Originally Posted by T3rminator
Have been thinking about this one for a bit. My assumption to begin with is that these variables and numbers are being crunched by some pretty smart people, so I'm giving them some benefit of the doubt.
From what I can gather, the modelling's goal was all to do with keeping our health care system from being overwhelmed. So starting with low cases as a base, and health care under no stress, with 70-80% vaxxed, they anticipate that we can open up as outlined in the phased plan. Any outbreaks can be contained locally and our health care system would still be ok.
But if we start with a "high" number of cases and it being so widely spread, our health care system already stretched, opening up as intended could tip it over the edge. I'm guessing questions now need to be asked on how much can we open up if, say, we start with 1000+ new cases a day across two of our most populous states, and with it being so widely spread, and our hospital "just" coping. I have a feeling they will rejig the phased restriction settings, rather than the % vaccination number.
I don't think anyone predicted we would be seeing 800+ a day cases again, and with the numbers we are seeing in hospital and ICU, but a good model should have had contingency scenarios already developed. Maybe they were rushed to get something out that was palatable to the people who initiated it?
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But it is not about the case numbers, it is about the hospitalisations.
NSW is currently using about 1.5% of their ventilators (Hazzard said they now have "a couple of thousand")
So if we get to 70% vaccination we could have 10 times the cases in NSW and need 5 times as many ventilators (and have 5 times as many in hospital - 3000 and ICU - 500, using probably 10% of ventilators) That case load corresponds roughly with where the UK is now. I would put my money on 8000-10000 cases a day in NSW a month or two after opening up. This will happen even if you start at zero.
Unfortunately this is what success looks like. I think we are all soft from being so protected from real outbreaks. We are all in for a rude awakening when we all put our big boy pants on and try to live a normal life with this. Look at the UK - 30000 cases a day, 100 plus deaths a day, would be the same as us having 12000 cases and 35-40 deaths a day. That is going to be normal. I just looked at the BBC news page, no where near the the hysteria we are having our situation. The Guardian UK, not even on the front page!