[Pedestrian]

Originally Posted by SIGSEGV

Better average medical care or not, is the throughput of our medical system better than China? I have no idea...

I'm sure the government elite get medical care as good any in the world. There are many excellent Chinese doctors.

But we are talking about what's available for the average man on the street.

With inconsistent standards between rural areas and the big cities, the health care system in China has been rated as 144th in the world by the World Health Organization. The country spends 5.5% of its GDP on health and has a relatively low number of doctors (1.6 per 1,000 population). With the largest economy on the planet, it attracts workers from all over the world: many of these find the right standard of care in the major hospitals of Beijing and Shanghai, but it’s useful to take a companion who can translate for you if you don’t speak a local language such as Cantonese, Hanyu, or Putonghua.

U.S. and other international hospitals offer a better level of care and English-speaking staff. However in rural areas, medical centres can be sparse and poorly funded, and staffed by staff speaking one of the languages of China. Newcomers might want to consider comprehensive private medical insurance cover from a reputable broker or company before they enter the country.

https://www.aetnainternational.com/e...-far-east.html

That's what I've read. China is nominally a Communist country so we assume the government provides health care. But as in the old Soviet Union, the government care for "regular" citizens, especially outside major cities, has been pretty rudimentary and middle class people often go to private clinics and hospitals and pay out of pocket. This is one reason China has a high savings rate--people budget for such expenses.

In this case the government has built prefab hospitals as we've seen and brought in thousands of "military doctors" to Wuhan and possibly other centers of illness. I'm putting that in quotes because I doubt China can have thousands of fully trained (by western standards) physicians to spare for this work and I'm equally sure they aren't going to strip their military of medical capability. I suspect these "military doctors" are much like we call "medics" in many cases--people with a few months of practical medical training (the Soviets also used such people). In the early days of this epidemic we all saw photos and video of people in waiting rooms and hallways with IVs running. The medical system, however good it may be in normal times, was clearly overwhelmed. Perhaps that has now been improved. Hard to know. And the US system is vulnerable to being overhelmed also if we get sick people in the numbers experienced in Wuhan. But that won't be the case for a while.

Finally, there's this:

One Doctor’s Life on the Coronavirus Front Lines. ‘If We Fail, What Happens to You All?’
Short on supplies and sleep, medical staff are being stretched to the limit to stop a pandemic no one fully understands
March 4, 2020 12:54 pm ET

Driving one evening in Wuhan, China, last month, Zhang Xiaochun pulled her car to the side of the road. She was on the verge of a breakdown.

She’d been working nonstop for days at the center of China’s coronavirus outbreak, where she is a doctor. Both of her parents had Covid-19, the disease caused by the virus, as did many of her colleagues. The number of sick and dying was climbing. And on this day, Dr. Zhang had forgotten about her 9-year-old daughter, who was home alone and scared—and who, at that moment, wasn’t picking up the phone.

Dr. Zhang’s eyes welled up, but she had no energy to cry. “My tears wouldn’t flow,” she said in an interview on Feb. 18.

Around the world, doctors are being stretched to the limit. Short on supplies and sleep, they’re being asked to stop a global pandemic that no one fully understands. Adding to that strain, they’re risking their own health while they diagnose cases and attend to sick patients—along with the health of their spouses, children and other close family members.

With the virus now growing more quickly outside China than inside, it’s a problem other countries will increasingly face.

In China, more than 3,000 doctors have been infected, according to official data, and at least 22 have died. Some medical professionals believe the numbers are even higher, adding uncertainty for doctors elsewhere confronting the virus. Untold numbers of family members have fallen ill.

Chinese doctors are working shifts of 10 hours or more. Many stay in the same hazmat suits the entire time, without food, water or bathroom breaks. Disrobing to eat or go to the bathroom could risk exposure. Medical workers are requesting psychological help to try to deal with the stress.

Infectious-disease doctors around the world are trained to handle highly contagious illnesses, and know the risks. But the current outbreak is spreading so quickly that it’s forcing hospitals to deploy staff with limited experience in infectious diseases and, sometimes, insufficient gear to keep them safe. Some hospitals can’t find enough staff willing to take on the risk . . . .

https://www.wsj.com/articles/if-we-f...&page=1&pos=18