Except that we didn’t have antihistamines and all the drugs which now exist, many of which would have saved millions of lives.
I’m not playing “lets pretend medicine in 2020 is equivalent to medicine in 1918.”
I agree, but what happens (like in Italy) when modern first-world hospitals are overrun and all the miracle products are no longer available for the flood of critical patients?
When the ICU beds and ventilators are all full, and there are 10 people stacked in the hall who can’t breath?
Then, it might as well be 1918. If you are dying in March of 2020, you can’t wait for a hypothetical vaccine in March of 2021.
Do you think they are just faking this in Italy, (and in Spain, France, Sweden, Norway, etc) to panic Americans and hurt Trump?
FYI, Milan is much more similar to Zurich or Vienna than to Naples. That is, it’s “first world” medicine and hospitals that have been overrun by sheer numbers.
Now they are dropping the triage age from 65 to 60.
You just run out of modern miracles when you are faced with EXPONENTIAL growth.
I’m not playing “lets pretend medicine in 2020 is equivalent to medicine in 1918.”
In 1918, we also traveled mostly by train, riverboat, steamship or on horseback. Contagious illnesses just couldn't spread as far or as fast. Coastal cities were most vulnerable - one hundred miles inland, not nearly as much. So the question becomes, have our medical advances kept pace with other facets of modern life, which can unintentionally multiply the viral spread?
The next week or so should tell us the answer.