Here's a thing I want everyone to understand.

There is a roughly 12-day lag between rising cases rising hospitalizations.

So the 1.5 million (!!!) confirmed cases from the last 2 weeks have not yet factored into stories about packed emergency rooms.

https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2020/11/pandemic-coronavirus-hospitalizations-new-record/617061/

In this story, I noted Iowa is already out of staffed beds. ICUs are at capacity. https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2020/11/third-surge-breaking-healthcare-workers/617091/

Here are Iowa's cases. The 12-day lag between cases & hospitalizations means people in the blue portion will be trying to enter those full ICUs over the next 2 weeks.

HOW?

I say Iowa, but you could do this same analysis for any number of states, especially in the Midwest. The near-term future is already baked in, which is why you have to act *ahead* of the virus. (See Problem #8 in this story about 9 intuitive fallacies.) https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2020/09/pandemic-intuition-nightmare-spiral-winter/616204/

Another way to think about these lags is that some of the people who are infected on Thanksgiving will enter the hospital in the middle of December, and the morgue around Christmas.

Don’t forget the long-haulers, many of whom are still struggling with lasting symptoms from COVID-19 infections in *the spring*.

A lot of the 1.5 million Americans who were infected this month—many young & prev healthy—will still be sick well into 2021. https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2020/08/long-haulers-covid-19-recognition-support-groups-symptoms/615382/