Yes—but so far I believe the fatality rate is non-existent.
I’d much rather have it spread much faster than anticipated initially but not be very lethal than have it spread slightly slower and kill at an above-advertised rate.
2% is in fact pretty bad, and if it is closer to 20% and people don’t gain immunity from having it, we would be looking at the worst thing since the Black Death.
Here’s some numbers we have:
20% of confirmed to ICU. ICU mortality rate 17% (if you’re in Wuhan) (Lancet study, Wuhan, 1066 patients)
current confirmed: 57943 confirmed + 11327 recovered = 69270 total x 20% x 17% = 2356 expected deaths
1669 already dead + 2356 if these were the final numbers = 4,024 (17.2% mortality) or about 90 remains/day x 45 days
90x1.5hrs = 135 hours across multiple crematoriums, say 20, = 7 hrs extra workload to cremate 5 remains a day at 1.5 hrs per cremation. But it appears they are running 24/hr shifts with 100 employees and up to 14 cremators, at least at one crematorium if we’re to believe the smuggled videos and talking heads. But even if there’s just 7 hours per crematorium per day extra, that doesn’t seem high enough for China to shut the entire country down.
So either they’re wargaming and stripping medical supplies from other countries while they imprison their own population, or something serious is up. If they’d let the CDC in we’d know. But they won’t.
20% as bad as that is it may be low
real rate can only be known after it runs its course
china acting like black death
but not real issue
real issue is running out of all the stuff made in china - processed foods medicine spare parts just everything - will know in a week how bad supply will be and what the shortages will be
ships that should have sailed 2 weeks ago have not.