Note: Further analysis of the New York hospital bed situation can be found here.
By the end of March 2020, natural experiment data from the COVID outbreak on the Diamond Princess cruise ship had proved that COVID was less than twice as lethal as severe flu. The elderly infection fatality rate (elderly IFR) was less than 2% (less than 2% of the 457 infections among the elderly led to death).
Imputation, using the ratio of elderly IFR-to-overall-IFR for COVID in the US, revealed an overall COVID IFR that was less than 0.3% (less than 3 people per 1,000 who catch COVID will die).
Another way of putting this, as reported by Martin Neil here, is to say that COVID was not a High Consequence Infectious Disease. Importantly, this was known by the end of March 2020, when Navy ships docked on each side of the United States, in order to offer “help.”
The purported purpose of docking military ships on each side of the United States in March was because “someone” had suspected that hospitals might become overrun during April, even though COVID was not a High Consequence Infectious Disease.
The original intention that was put forth was that the ships would treat non-COVID only (easing the strain on the hospitals).
The official narrative for New York is that not even 200 people were cared for on the ship, in the entire time it remained (expensively) docked. If easing hospital strain was the purpose, why weren’t more cared for?
The NY Hospital System
By April Fool’s Day of 2020, the state of New York reported having almost 47,000 staffed hospital beds and over 6,000 staffed ICU beds:
[click to enlarge]
While 20% of the 57 New York counties that show up in the report reported having only 12% or less remaining availability (88% or more beds filled) of either general hospital beds, or ICU beds — the gravity of the number is reduced by the fact that, in some cases like in Chenango county (with 3 total ICU beds), it would have been easy to fill up.
By the day of “peak COVID cases” using a 7-day rolling average (10 Apr 2020), only 16% of counties would report that they only had 12% or less beds available, either general hospital beds, or ICU beds. That’s because the total sum of staffed beds rose in preparation for COVID.
But people can be transported to neighboring counties if necessary, so a key question is this:
Was there ever a time when NY beds were “not enough?”
Let’s check the data. If, by the beginning of April, there were about 47,000 general beds staffed, then was that “not enough?”:
Okay, that puts a dent in the narrative that Navy ships were needed to ease hospital strain, but what about ICU beds? If, by the beginning of April, there were over 6,000 staffed ICU beds, then was that “not enough?”:
That puts yet another nail in the coffin of the narrative that Navy ships were required to ease hospital strain. But that leaves the question open:
What was the purpose of spending millions of taxpayer dollars in order to keep two oil-tanker sized Navy medical ships docked?
One conspiracy is that the ships were there to facilitate the outbreak, rather than to help with medical response.
In early April, the ships were internally modified so that there’d be compartments with restricted access — with the official narrative being that they “changed their minds” and that they were going to begin treating COVID patients, instead of just picking up the slack by treating non-COVID patients.
A Train Wreck
Most astonishly, a train engineer tried to “t-bone” the Navy ship in California by intentionally derailing a runaway train so as to ram it straight into the ship (or at least get close to doing that):
As the report above shows, he was trying to use the incident to break an underlying story about how the purpose of the Navy ships was not actually to help ease hospital strain.
Reference
[28 Mar 2020 report citing Mayor de Blasio predicting NY hospitals overrun by 5 Apr 2020] — https://www.thecity.nyc/health/2020/3/28/21210412/hospitals-nearing-icu-bed-limits-as-covid-19-surges-in-nyc
[30 Mar 2020 report citing Governor Cuomo saying NY hospitals were being overrun, even though over 85% of counties on 30 Mar 2020 had at least 13% bed availability in both general and also in ICU beds] — https://www.npr.org/sections/coronavirus-live-updates/2020/03/30/823826987/hospital-ship-usns-comfort-arrives-in-new-york-to-ease-coronavirus-pressure
[2 Apr 2020 report citing how it was that the engineer of a train tried to hit the California Navy ship with a runaway train, or at least get close to hitting it, after intentionally derailing the train at high speed] — https://web.archive.org/web/20200414093105/https://www.npr.org/sections/coronavirus-live-updates/2020/04/02/825897966/train-engineer-says-he-crashed-in-attempt-to-attack-navy-hospital-ship-in-l-a
[3 Apr 2020 report citing Mayor de Blasio stating that the ‘problem’ of the Navy only treating 22 people would be “resolved quickly” and that the ship “will be filled up soon”] — https://www.cnn.com/2020/04/03/politics/navy-hospital-ship-comfort-new-york-coronavirus/index.html
[17 Apr 2020 report citing the Pentagon retracting a public statement that had said that the Navy ship would begin taking patients from the greater Philadelphia area] — https://www.cnbc.com/2020/04/17/nearly-90percent-of-the-us-navy-hospital-ship-in-new-york-is-empty-amid-coronavirus-fight.html
[21 Apr 2020 reporting citing how it was than many NY hospitals furloughed staff because hospital use was so low in much, if not most, of New York state during April of 2020] — https://www.pbs.org/newshour/health/navy-ship-sent-to-nyc-for-outbreak-no-longer-needed-says-cuomo
Nightingale Hospital, London plus other regional ones set up for Covid were like ship Marie Celeste!
Don't forget the dancing medics Tic Toc videos either. Must have been made to relieve stress, or was it boredom? Or was it all done to show they were lying to us? No doubt there were patients but not as many as the media spouted.