So far, the novel Coronavius has claimed the lives of 457 people in the United States alone while there are almost 34,425 active cases reported. After China and Italy, the US has now become third country in terms of the number of people affected by the COVID-19 pandemic.
Ever since this deadly virus emerged from a wet market in Wuhan, China, COVID-19 has affected the lives of millions of people all over the world with many countries even imposing mandatory lockdown forcing people to stay at their homes to stop the spread of the virus infection. But from what we see online everyday, it looks like many are still not convinced on how important the concept social distancing is.
The scary death toll numbers
US doctor Emily Porter, who is a board-approved emergency physician in Austin, Texas, has now explained in detail the relevance of staying at home, especially for the people in the country. "Everyone is really confused because they don't understand why are the bars closing, why is everyone hoarding toilet paper, why is my gym closing, and what does social-distancing mean, what does flatten the curve mean?," she is heard saying in the recent video.
Porter then goes on to explain the crisis situation with a lot of numbers and calculations to make things clear for people.
"In America, we have 331 million people. The CDC (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention) is estimating that about 40 to 70 percent of them will get infected. So to make the numbers easy, I am gonna say that its 150 million people, that's about 45%. So if 150 million people get infected, 80% of them are gonna be just fine. So 20% of people will need hospitalisation,"
After mentioning about the crisis situation Italy is facing with shortage of beds in hospitals due to the Coronavirus outbreak, she added: "5-10% of the 150 million that get infected are going to need a ventilator life support. It helps their lungs rest, it helps their hearts rest, it gives their body time to heal because we don't have a cure for this virus. Let's say 5% of the people need ventilators, 5% of 150 million people is 7.5 million vents needed in America."
As per her calculation, in Texas alone, there would be about 4,000 ventilators and nationwide, it is estimated to be almost 720,00 to 120,000. She says that even if the country has a total of 150,000 ventilators, only 0.02% of people could get it, which means, one in fifty people can only get the vent support, clearly indicating the death of 49 people.
"That's scary. That should scare you. That scares me. That should scare everybody who should understand basic math, including my second grader," she added.
Porter also suggests that the scary result means that the doctors will have to choose who must survive and who all shouldn't, the difficult decision that many medics in Italy are facing right now. Recently, an Indian nurse working in Italy had mentioned about this horrible ordeal in a viral audio clip that is doing the rounds on social media.
Porter's video, shared on the Facebook page of NowThis has gone viral with nearly 2 million views, in less than 13 hours.
Watch the video here:
Recently, Emily's sister Katie Porter, a Congress Representative in the US, was in the news for securing free Coronavirus testing for all Americans regardless of insurance after presenting compelling evidence in the US House of Representatives. She had made calculations and estimated that the testing itself would cost a person at least $1,331 forcing many to restrain from conducting the test even if they have COVID-19 symptoms.
