New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, center, and first responder personnel walk near the scene where a helicopter was reported to have crash landed on top of a building in midtown Manhattan, Monday, June 10, 2019, in New York. (AP Photo/Mark Lennihan)
New York Governor Andrew Cuomo seemed confident at his daily Wuhan virus press conference today. That’s pretty unusual. Fredo’s big brother usually seems panicked and acts like he’s on the verge of eat-sh**-and-bay-at-the-moon losing it during these briefings.
Here’s the full video.
Highlights:
- So far, there have been a total of 122,031 test positive for Wuhan virus since March 3. The significance of the case increase is not the raw number but the fact that the increase is an arithmetic increase, not a logarithmic one. This seems to put the lie to one of the assumptions in most, if not all, of the models that are driving policy decisions.
- A total of 16,479 people are hospitalized with Wuhan. Of those 4,376 are in ICU care. There is good news in this, while the number of hospitalizations only increased by 574, hospital discharges increased by 1,709. If this trend continues, it shows that the virus has crested in New York and three times as many people are being discharged from hospitals as admitted. This chart tells the story.
Has New York turned a corner? This is new hospitalization data from Gov. Cuomo's briefing earlier today. pic.twitter.com/CQG1jqoGCq
— streiff (@streiffredstate) April 5, 2020
- Deaths increased from 3,565 to 4,159 but the number of deaths has been dropping, in Cuomo’s words, ‘for the first time.’ On April 2, 562 people died, on April 3, 630, and on April 4, 594.
- ICU admissions are down by 37% over yesterday.
- Cuomo says in their planning models, needing an additional 110,000 hospital beds was the ‘moderate case’ projection. Charitably this was an insane projection and whoever came up with it should be required to wear some kind of identifying tattoo on their forehead forever.
It is too early to make a definitive statement, but it is difficult to imagine hospitalizations surging. The dramatic increase of hospital discharges and the smaller number of new ICU patients all indicate clinicians are learning more about how to manage the virus and mitigate its effects.