Cuomo had shutdown NY mid/late March thinking that 1 million cases will lead to 150K in the hospital (15% hospitalization rate) and 30K - 40K will be in the ICU. CDC says this week that the hospitalization rate is 3.4% of symptomatic cases. https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/hcp/planning-scenarios.html

Note the row below the red box. The CDC says that more than a third cases don׳t have symptoms. This means that the Coronavirus hospital rate (when combining all type of cases) is 2.3 percent; not the 15% range that led to the NY shutdowns. This is 23,000 in hospital; not 150K.

Cuomo’s math expected that anywhere from a fifth to a quarter hospital cases will land in the ICU. This means that of 23K cases in the hospital, 4,600 to 5,750 will be in the ICU.

At apex, NY had close to 20K in the hospital and 5,100 in the ICU.

Until today, Cuomo’s lockdown policies are driven by his illusion that we had 20K hospitalizations (not 150K) and 5,100 ICUs (not 30,000+) because the lockdowns worked and not because Coronavirus’ hospital/ICU rates are way lower than what he thought it is.

A month ago, NY released antibodies test results showing that about 2.9 million New Yorkers already have antibodies. This means that in early April (at Apex), easily half this amount had Corona. So at Apex:

NY was at +1.45 million cases.

18,000+ Hospital.

5,100 ICU

With the antibodies tests, Cuomo could have known for four weeks already that NY had way less in hospital/ICU than what we he feared due to the rates being lower than what he thinks he is. But alas. He is still setting policy based on the flawed assumptions from mid/late March.

There is more. March 23, Cuomo said that NY will hit Apex in 14-21 days, and will need 30K to 40K ICU beds. Days later, NY was only at 1,583 ICUs in total.

For NY to hit 30K ICUs within 14 days, NY needed to add 2K ICUs PER DAY two weeks in a row. But it rose by about 350 a day.

With every passing day that NY’s ICU count rose by about 350 in late March instead of 2,000 a day or more, Cuomo should have known that something is way off with his assumptions (as I have tried pointing out at the time). But he kept plowing ahead with the flawed math.