It’s obvious that this shutdown of the economy can’t go on forever, or for even that much longer. While government programs are helping, the funding is not without limit. The government cannot continue to prop up the economy for the duration of this virus, which is estimated to go on for up to two years! There will have to be a restart of business soon, but how can we balance things out?
The answer to the above question lies in finding the sweet spot where hospitals are not overwhelmed, but are allowed to operate at or very near capacity. Since health care in Canada is governed by the Provinces, this sweet spot will be different for each province and territory. Finding this sweet spot requires the acceptance of certain scenarios.
The first, is the acceptance that a certain number of people will become infected. While most of us are paying the most attention to the figures in relation to infections, that should not be the numbers we use to judge the impact of the virus. More attention needs to be given to the numbers of hospitalizations and those requiring intensive care.
The second thing we will have to accept is that a certain number of people will die. It’s a hard pill to swallow, but a necessary evil. Limiting this number can be done however, as we can already see who are the societal groups that are most susceptible. In this case we can already see that the elderly (over 70 yrs) and those with certain preexisting conditions are the groups to protect. Allowing restrictions on those groups to continue can help alleviate the stress on the health care system.
Clearing hospital beds and increasing the number of ICU beds is the key that will make this work. The more beds that are made available, the higher the sweet spot becomes. What we need to find out is the average time from hospitalization to recovery, or at least release from the hospital. Average recovery time is the number to look for. This, in combination with the number of people infected requiring hospitalization allows us to set a number of acceptable infections within society.
Once we have this data, we can then start to open the valve, so to say, just enough that the hospitals are able to handle the patients and rotate them back out to clear the way for new cases. Let’s plug in some fictitious numbers so we can better understand.
Let’s assume that a specific province has cleared 10 000 hospital beds and 1000 ICU beds. If we find that 50% of people allowed into the public without restrictions, or with social distancing practices get infected and 50% of those infected require hospitalization then we can get 40 000 people back to work. (half of the 40 000 will be infected or 20 000. half of those infected need to be hospitalized or 10 000). If those in hospital require 2 weeks to recover, then we can accept 5000 new hospitalizations per week. This means we can now send a certain number of the population back into society, so long as we don’t “open the valve” too quickly.
From what I have seen from government actions, they are actively seeking the data to find that sweet spot, and for good reason. As I mentioned in the opening paragraph, the government cannot support the economy indefinitely. Hopefully they find that sweet spot before the money dries up. I suspect that we will see a restart of the economy within the next month.
