Lies, Damn Lies, and Statistics
Referring to:
Looking at the "Development of occupancy over time" graph, I see three anomalies:
- We see that on the weekends the total number of beds declines drastically. This is presumably because fewer of the associated staff are assigned to work weekends. This is purely a cost-savings measure, which seems a bit odd for a global public health emergency.
- The 15-day average curves are almost entirely above the maximum values, and seem to take no account for the huge dips on weekends, or even during the week.
- The 15-day average curve for free beds is shown as being over 800, whereas the number of free beds is clearly shown to be much lower. It seems the 15-day average curve for free beds is really showing the total number of beds in operation.
I asked the authorities (2019-ncov@bag.admin.ch) about these discrepancies, and gave up waiting for an answer after two weeks.
One has to wonder how so many ICU patients are suddenly fit enough to leave the ICU on weekends, checking back in on Monday. Do most patients miraculously require less intensive care on the weekends, or are hospital administrators booking them unnecessarily into ICU during the week so as to justify the size of their ICU?
The answer may be hinted at in this quote from the explanation of "Certified and ad-hoc beds" on the same page:
Provided that they utilise at least 60 per cent of their certified beds on average over the year, hospitals are free to decide whether they operate all or only a portion of their certified beds.
It seems there is an incentive to maintain an average occupancy of at least 60% for the ICU beds.
This ICU chart was the primary justification given for several of the covid measures. Curiously, these discrepancies do not appear in any of the many similar charts for other statistics.
Looking at the total covid-19 time period (https://www.covid19.admin.ch/en/hosp-capacity/icu?time=total), we see that:
- Available ICU beds are down to about half of what they were in March 2020
- ICU occupancy never exceeded 80% of available beds
- covid-19 usage never exceeded 50% of available beds
Given these facts, plus the well-founded suspicion that up to two-thirds of ICU patients could just as well be in normal beds, it appears that fears of ICU overloading were far from justified.
