I’m bookmarking this report that came out in the UK yesterday. A detailed study of the Intensive Care taken up by Covid-19 vs other diseases in the UK this year, by the Intensive Care National Audit & Research Centre.
Given the concerns -- might I say “fear mongering”? -- that we’re running out of hospital space -- not just in Britain, but here in Hong Kong, all over Europe, in the US -- it’s interesting to pick out the chart above. The lines across are the last four years, in % and the bars are this year, in more detail. For most months the hospital occupancy for intensive care is at or under the last four years.
Other stats show the hospitalisation by ethnicity. Most are in line with their proportion in the general population. The outlier is Asian where infections are about double their proportion in the general population. Don’t know why. Not for lack of care, for they are also the same % in terms of intensive ventilation, which I assume is a marker of the extent of care. So I’m left with wondering, and wouldn’t immediately go to “structural racism”, though some will/already have.
Those with higher BMI are more represented than their proportion in the general population, as we’d expect. But not by as much of a margin as I’d thought. Am I just giving myself an out here? Given that mine is on the wrong side of average?
