I thought this paper was interesting:
ICU Occupancy and mechanical ventilator use in the United States
ICU occupancy rates and ventilator use.
We can do some useful calculations with the numbers from that paper:
Italy has ~12.5 ICU beds per capita
U.S. has ~35 ICU beds per capita
Italy's best hospitals appear to have .8 ventilators per ICU bed
Average US hospitals have ~1 ventilator per ICU bed
The math says the U.S. has 3.5 times the number ventilators per capita
*US numbers current as of 2014
In the Bergamo metro, there are ~500,000 people. More than 25% are over 65 years of age. Comparatively, less than 12.5% in the U.S. are over 65 years of age.
Median age of ICU admits for WuHan Virus is ~66 years
~about half of ICU admits require ventilator use
*CDC numbers
If we adjust for the comparative demographics of Italy VS. U.S., we can estimate that the U.S. effectively has ~7X times more ventilators per severe respiratory distress case than Italy does.
If you do the math, you should be able to see the very high probability that Italy's hospital system and ventilator needs would be overwhelmed by an only slightly worse than average flu season.
if we assume a .5% CFR and 3 months of peak cases, and that all of those patients required long term ventilator use of over 14 days, the Italian hospitals would have had a sufficient number of ventilators for all patients if they had the same number of ventilators as hospitals in the U.S. have.
You don't get to take any more of my time.