Pages 6 and 7 of the report are a hoot.
So is comparing the US healthcare system with the NHS.
What this paper truly addresses is their apology to their country.
Regardless of what kind of healthcare system (or any other system) you have big issue is capacity. There is a certain capacity to treat people of a certain problem, in this case COVID-19. It’s fatality rate being anything from 10 to 50 times the flu is in of itself not alarming.
The alarming aspects are that it is more transmissible than the flu (in both ease of catching it and spreading it). It’s a numbers game.
For example: every year on average in Australia approximately 3.5 million Australians (13.5% of the population) get the flu bad enough to require sick leave/treatment and of those about 3,500 die of it. The leading cause of death in Australia is heart disease with about 18,000 per year.
With COVID-19, very conservative numbers on hospitalisation in ICU/mortality rate of 10% and 1% respectively and a infection number the same as flu (3.5 million) gives you 350,000 requiring ICU and 35,000 dead.
For the record, Australia lost about 60,000 over 4 years in WW1 and 27,000 over 6 years in WW2. COVID-19 deaths would occur over a 6-9 month period. Even spreading it out evenly over a 12 month period (which it won’t be) that’s over 29,000 new ICU patients per month.
That number would strain the US health system just using Australia’s numbers. Multiply it by 12 to account for population differences.
Run the numbers. It isn’t the zombie apocalypse, but it’s not a nothing burger.