What is your evidence that hospitals in America in general, and in California, are anywhere near being overwhelmed? I've cited evidence which shows the opposite--they are very far from being overwhelmed.
I live in a county of little over 100K residents, one death occurred over the outbreak, a 91 year old person died of COVID19. Over the weeks we had a total about 65 known cases, all sent to recuperate at home, with a single patient in the hospital.
The hospital has an entire wing dedicated to COVID patients that did not actually materialize. No care is provided to other patients that might need it (unless it is an emergency). Every appointment was rescheduled months into the future.
Everyone must stay home on the account of better erring on the side of caution.
I just went to the ER last night for what turned out to be a kidney stone. The place was empty. The doctor had just learned that day that the owners had laid off 50% of the staff.
On 3/16 San Francisco and some other cities issued the shelter-in-place order, and CA had 472 patients. Two weeks later, on 3/30, CA had 6,932 patients. That's 21% average daily increase, with an existing shelter-in-place order.
With 21% daily increase, it takes 12 days to go from 10% to 100% hospital utilization. And change of policy usually takes a week or more to affect the curve. Which means, we are ~5 days away from an invisible deadline, after which hospitals will be overrun no matter what.
First, it's not clear or obvious that the 21% daily increase rate would increase indefinitely. Infection rate slows more people get infected, and new potential victims decrease.
Second, all regions saw giant, double digit growth rates at first, and then lower growth rates. Sweden is taking a more laissez faire approach, and their growth rate has dropped from over +20% d/d to +1% d/d [1]
There isn't data to support the idea that we'd have 100% utilization in the Bay Area without shelter in place.
They’re not near being overwhelmed. That’s the point of we are currently living in success. But what we know from Italy and NYC is that the margin between situation-normal and patients-are-dying-in-hallways is less than a month.
