Tucker: How badly is the COVID-19 crisis hurting our health care system?
The concern for months has been that once large numbers of people started to get sick, our system would collapse.
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It has been a very long week. We don't need to tell you that. But on Monday we did. We told you it would be a long week. Early that morning, the Surgeon General of the United States Dr. Jerome Adams, appeared on television to warn Americans to expect the worst:
DR. JEROME ADAMS, U.S. SURGEON GENERAL: I didn't expect that I'd be on "The Today Show" for such as somber occasion.
I want America to understand. This week, it's going to get bad.
This week, it's going to get bad. Sobering words from the country's top doctor.
So was he right? How bad was it?
This seems like a good time to assess that. In a moment like this events move bewilderingly fast. It becomes very hard to keep track of where you are, relative to where you thought you'd be. Perspective becomes impossible.
But on this Friday night we're going to give it a try. Because we think it is important.
Clear headedness is always the first casualty of crisis and that's exactly how bad decisions get made right in the middle of it.
So here are some facts to consider as we move forward.
When our show opened Monday night, there were just over 40,000 confirmed cases of coronavirus in the United States. On Friday night, at the end of the same week, that number has more than doubled to over 100,000 cases.
Over the course of Monday, all day, 141 Americans died from coronavirus. By Friday, about twice as many have died and that's awful. Every death is awful. It's also a steep and ominous curve.
But in absolute numbers, which may or may not be relevant, it is far fewer than many predicted. Most of the deaths have been concentrated, by the way, in a few places -- Seattle, Louisiana, and above all, in and around New York City. In the city alone, 450 people have died so far.
One New York doctor recently described the situation in his hospital as worse than 9/11:
DR. STEVE KASSAPIDIS, CRITICAL CARE PHYSICIAN: Hell. Biblical. I kid you not. People come in, they get intubated. They die. The cycle repeats.
QUESTION: You overwhelmed?
KASSAPIDIS: Yes, the system is overwhelmed. All over the place. 9/11 was nothing compared to this. We were open waiting for patients to come who never came. OK.
Now, they just keep coming.
That was Dr. Steve Kassapidis. His hospital in Queens seems pretty much completely overwhelmed by this.
How is the rest of the country doing? The concern for months has been, once large numbers of people started to get sick, our system would collapse. We would run out of doctors and beds and equipment and drugs, and people who otherwise might have been saved would instead die.
That could still happen. It's always something to worry about. But so far, thank God, it has not happened, at least on a large scale in the United States.
Doctors and nurses are still working, working under tremendous stress and at risk to themselves, but still saving people.
Even in New York, the scariest predictions have not yet come to pass and when they seem to have, the truth is and this is almost always the case about everything. It's turned out to be more complicated than it seemed at first.
For example, on Thursday night we told you about nurses who donned trash bags because there wasn't sufficient protective gear. A now-famous picture of that has been circulating everywhere. It's shocking. But it turns out it is not new.
According to a report out of New York, nurses in the city have complained about supply shortages for at least a year. In other words, this is a problem, a bad problem, but it's a long term problem.
We've also worried on this show, along with an awful lot of other people, that there wouldn't be enough ventilators in hospitals -- the breathing machines to keep coronavirus patients alive. So far there have been instead more than enough.
On Thursday night, we told you the federal government had sent thousands of additional ventilators to New York, many of which remain in warehouses unused.
New York's Governor Andrew Cuomo apparently was watching our show on Thursday night when we said that, and he didn't want to hear it. His staff called the show on Thursday night to complain.
But on Friday, Cuomo conceded, in fact, that it was true:
GOV. ANDREW CUOMO (D-NY): Somebody said on one of the cable news shows, the ventilators that New York needed aren't even being deployed. They're in a stockpile.
Yes, they're in a stockpile. Because that's where they're supposed to be because we don't need them yet. We need them for the apex. The apex isn't here, so we're gathering them in the stockpile, so when we need them, they will be there.
Saving ventilators for the apex of the epidemic. We're not going to mock that. It's not crazy, actually. It may be smart, in fact.
The question is, when can we expect the apex of the epidemic? And the truth is, we can only guess with that.
Three months ago, no one apart from scientists had heard of the strain of coronavirus. We still know relatively little about it, surprisingly little really. We can't say with precision, how easily it spreads from person to person. We don't know how many people have it in this or any other country.
And most importantly, we're not at all sure how many people, in the end, will die of it. If the week we just saw is as bad as it gets, we will be fine, essentially.
If deaths keep rising at the rate they are rising now, we're in big trouble. That would be a calamity.
You could make arguments for either scenario and deeply informed people are doing just that.
The national shutdown we're living through is based in large part on fears the virus could have an overall death rate of two, three or even four percent. That's a devastating rate of fatality. It is high enough to change this country's demographics.
But not everybody buys that assumption. Again, the assumption upon which a lot of policy has been built.
In an op-ed for The Wall Street Journal this week, two Stanford Medical School professors suggested that coronavirus infection may be far more widespread than we thought.
Using a series of formulas, they concluded that America may already have millions of cases, active cases of coronavirus and that would be paradoxically very good news. It would mean the virus is far less deadly than we thought it was.
If true, total American deaths could wind up in the thousands rather than the millions. Every decent person wants to believe that's the case and it certainly may be true. The problem is, it also maybe, won't be true.
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Outside our country, there is growing evidence that the coronavirus is very deadly. Italy, for example, reported 919 coronavirus deaths on Friday.
At one point not long ago, we thought deaths in Italy might be dropping. They may have reached their apex. But they haven't, and they're not dropping. Friday was a new record.
And it could, in fact, be worse than that thanks to undercounting which seems to be widespread.
In the Italian town of Dalmine, for example, 70 people have died in the last few weeks. Now officially, only two of them had coronavirus, and yet last year, only 18 people total died during the same span of time and that doesn't seem right statistically.
In a town called Bagnatica, 18 people have died in the last month and yet last year, only 28 people died over 12 months. Is the difference due to coronavirus? We may never know.
And that's the problem, and that's why it's so hard for anyone to make wise decisions right now. We're operating with too little information. Informed guessing is essentially the best we can hope for.
Many of our leaders, believe it or not, are trying their hardest under these circumstances.
Scientists, epidemiologists, doctors, nurses, even, occasionally, politicians. They want the best for the country even though they may be reaching different conclusions about how to get there.
Others, unfortunately, aren't even trying. They're getting rich manipulating the markets during a crisis. They're plotting to seize political advantage. They're wasting our time giving pompous little lectures about how great they are.
Remember their names. They ought to be punished when this is over.
Here's someone you should never forget. This is the Health Commissioner of New York City. She's one of the most criminally incompetent officials in the history of municipal government and public health.
As the plague bore down on New York, she told citizens that everything was absolutely fine and then she urged them to spend more time in crowded public places. Watch this.
DR. OXIRIS BARBOT, COMMISSIONER, NEW YORK CITY DEPARTMENT OF HEALTH AND MENTAL HYGIENE: The important thing for New Yorkers to know is that in the city currently, their risk is low and our city preparedness is high.
There's no risk at this point in time -- we're always learning more -- about having it be transmitted in casual contact, right. So we're telling New Yorkers go about your lives. Take the subway. Go out. Enjoy life. but practice everyday precautions.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Right.
BARBOT: That if it were likely to be transmitted casually, we would be seeing a lot more cases.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: A lot more cases. Right. Right.
BARBOT: Yes.
Yes, you can't get it casually. It's not really contagious. Take the subway, I repeat, take the subway.
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Can you charge a person like that for stupidity and negligence? You ought to be able to.
There's still a lot we don't know about coronavirus. Most of the important things we still don't know. But here's what's clear. In a lot of places, we need new leadership.
Adapted from Tucker Carlson's monologue on "Tucker Carlson Tonight' on Friday, March 27, 2020.
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