Coping With Covid-19: Flare-ups are inevitable but new lockdowns aren’t the answer.

WSJ editorial. Excerpts:

"More spread was inevitable once states started to relax their lockdowns, and they are going to continue until a vaccine exists. But they also need to be put in context. New York City had about 12 times more Covid-19 patients per capita in intensive-care units at the peak of its hospital surge in April than California does today, six times more than Miami-Dade, five times more than Arizona, and four times more than Harris County. 

New York City and other hard-hit parts of the Northeast experienced bigger outbreaks in the spring, which were slow to recede even with strict lockdowns as the virus spread through nursing homes and public housing. Two months after locking down, New York City still had many more Covid patients in intensive care than most new hot spots do today.

Elderly patients typically require more acute care and spend more time in the hospital, and the good news is that the hospitalized cases now are younger and on average less severe. The chief operating officer of Tenet Healthcare, which runs hospitals in Sun Belt states, told investors last week that “the length of stay on [recent] cases is lower, the resource consumption is lower.”

Most hot spots currently have ample health-care capacity, though some hospitals are stretched. Miami-Dade County has about 1,000 ICU beds available for a surge, more than five times the number of Covid patients in intensive care. Harris County has about 455 ICU beds available, about as many as are currently occupied by Covid patients."

"Florida and Texas began reopening more than a month before hospitalizations began surging. Health officials in Arizona have linked flare-ups to specific events or places such as large Hispanic holiday gatherings and Indian reservations. Cases on Indian reservations and rural counties along the Mexican border are four to five times higher per capita than around Tucson and Phoenix. These can be monitored and contained.

Some clusters have been tied to bars and churches, and political leaders should do more to warn about social-distancing and to use masks. But states like Wisconsin and Iowa that have been open for several weeks have recorded only a slight or no uptick in hospitalizations. Locking down again won’t stop family gatherings in homes, or essential workers who return home to spread the virus to families."

"A new study in the Journal of the American Medical Association finds that the number of adults reporting symptoms of serious psychological distress rose to 13.6% from 3.9% in the same time in 2018, with higher levels among the young (24%), low-income (19.3%), and Hispanics (18.3%)."