Fun and/or Interesting
Pandemic Facts
* The shelter-in-place strategy was implemented to prevent hospitals from being overwhelmed. But hospitals didn’t collapse. We paid $660 million to set up mobile field hospitals to treat COVID-19 patients. Apart from the Javits Center, which cost $11 million to set up, all the other mobile field hospitals combined treated 82 patients. That’s $8 million per patient.
* In 48 out of 50 states, the R0 rate (basic reproduction number) is below 1. That means the epidemic can’t expand in those states.
* 38 million Americans are unemployed. It is expected that 40% will never get their jobs back.
* Of 600,000 cancer patients receiving chemo, half are now experiencing delays in their treatments.
* Calls to suicide lines have increased as much as 1000% in some states.
* Young kids are 20 times more likely to die from the flu than from COVID-19, yet children are still being kept out of school.