Alex Berenson: Coronavirus deaths in Texas a fraction of what they were in New York
Texas sets second daily record for COVID-19 cases in 4 days; reaction from former New York Times reporter Alex Berenson.
Former New York Times reporter Alex Berenson told "Bill Hemmer Reports" Wednesday that "it doesn't look like there's hospital overrun" in Texas shortly before the state announced a new high in the number of daily reported deaths from COVID-19.
"I think Texas, you know, like Arizona, like Florida, the hospitals are filling up," Berenson, the author of "Unreported Truths About COVID-19 and Lockdowns," told host Bill Hemmer. "They are not, you know, they're not at capacity. They're not into surge, except Houston might be a little bit into, sort of, first-level surge of ICU's ... Houston has about 1,300 to 1,400 people in ICU right now and they have about 1,300 ICU beds. They can also add about 1,000 ICU beds.
"Things are tough," Berenson acknowledged. "We're working hard. There's strain on our systems. Our systems are managing and right now, it doesn't look like there's hospital overrun."
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On Wednesday, Texas officials reported 110 new COVID-19 deaths, bringing the total in the state to 3,432. The number of coronavirus hospitalizations went down by a net change of 98, bringing that total to 10,471 across the state.
"If you look at the number of deaths in Houston and in Texas as a whole, in Texas, it's [a population of] 30 million people," Berenson said. "New York ... has 20 million people. The deaths in ... Texas are ... a fraction, they're 10 percent of what they were in New York."
Berenson then reminded Hemmer that hospitals, including intensive care units, typically function close to capacity even in normal times.
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"The only time in the recent past the hospitals haven't run near capacity is when we locked them all down in April and May," he said. "And that wasn't good for hospitals. They laid off a lot of people, not just in Texas, but all over the country outside New York. We had this phenomenon where ... hospital workers were actually being furloughed and laid off. We don't want that either. We want hospitals to be almost full."
Berenson concluded by telling Hemmer that the next two weeks will tell exactly how serious the situation is in Texas and other states with increased case numbers.
The question, I would say ... is [whether] the number of cases that we've seen, the number of positive tests we've seen, going to translate into more strain, strain that the hospitals can't handle," he said. "Hospitals seem to have topped out in terms of the number of COVID patients they're seeing. They've topped out at a level that's high, at a level that's a strain, but not at a level that they can't handle."
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