Glad you asked..here’s something I wrote up for family members on a FB discussion about CV-19 we’re having..
One final thing that might help put all this in perspective..there are estimates from credible experts (see https://thehill.com/changing-america/well-being/prevention-cures/482794-officials-say-the-cdc-is-preparing-for) including a leading epidemiologist who’s the Director of the Center for Communicable Disease Dynamics at Harvard and a biostatistician to the WHO that CV-19 will infect up to 40-70% of the global population (Harvard estimate) or up to two-thirds (WHO biostatistician estimate). Let’s assume those are both wildly pessimistic (OK, doom and gloom, totally wrong), and it instead infects “only” 10% vs the 40-70% or 66% number those guys are using. With 7.8 Billion people worldwide, a very conservative 10% infection rate would affect 780 million people. With a current CFR of 3.4% (God helps us if that holds), that’s 26.5M dead globally. IF (and it’s a big IF), the CFR drops to Spanish Flu levels of ~2%, that’s still 15.6M people. An optimistic (and unlikely) 1% still gets us to 7.8M people. (At 40% [low end of Harvard estimate] and current CFR of 3.4%, 106.8M people. Don’t run the math on the high end!) Those obviously are staggering numbers and seem completely unbelievable..but that’s what Harvard, the WHO and others are projecting. So, to XXX’s original “do you really believe” question..the calculations using very conservative numbers much less (10% vs. 40-70%) than what the “experts” are saying sure seems to bear that out. Not trying to scare anyone but I do see too much “it’s just like the flu and no big deal!” going around..and that’s equally frightening if any of this does come to pass.. Let’s hope and pray that these guys are way off and that it does wind up not being as big of a deal as it seems like it will be.
There’s also the study (which I believe was from a major University in Australia) posted on Drudge last night that predicts from 15M (”best case”) to 68M (”worst case”) dead worldwide, with 260K - 1M+ of those in the US.
Then, there’s the American Hospital Association presentation linked from Business Insider that says the AHA is preparing for 96 million (!) cases in the US, with ~480K dead.
Hope that helps..I’m fairly frustrated at all the “it’s no big deal!” posts as I’ve been reading literally hundreds of articles since the end of Jan or so on this. It IS a (very) big deal and could be the most significant event any of us have ever seen. I PRAY that I am wrong, but my gut says that I (unfortunately) won’t be.
Thanks for the info.