Deadliest Enemy: Our War Against Killer Germs

by Mark Olshaker

But what if the number of severe cases goes up by 30 percent? Guess what: We’re pretty much at capacity now under normal circumstances, having cut all of the “fat” out of the system for budgetary reasons. We don’t have any surge capacity. We also will run out of the equipment we need to protect healthcare workers, such as respirators and the tight, face-fitting masks.

If 1 percent of those critical influenza victims need ventilators, we can probably handle it. If 3 percent need them, forget it; we just don’t have enough machines in the country, and neither does any other country. Even if they did, do you think they would lend them to us? That means a lot of people would die even though we have the technology to save them. We’d get into triage and issues of allocation and hard choices no one wants to confront.