80% or better recover from Coronavirus. So even if you get it you’ll likely recover. The idea is to not have everyone with the flu running to be hospitalized unless necessary, as with elderly etc.....and to prevent as much spread as possible.
Let’s suppose, for the sake of argument, that 1 million Americans died. That would be tragic. It would also be 0.3% of our population. 99.7% would still be alive.
Unless, of course, we starve to death because food supplies don’t flow because the government is in panic.
The coronavirus is undoubtedly serious, but all credible reports I’ve seen so far indicate that it’s about as serious as the flu
As simple example, based on the numbers given by China, three weeks after the disease pretty much topped out new infections, they still have 1 in 8 still sick. Their death toll has continued to climb at a higher rate compared to recoveries and is now at a dead/resolved rate of about 4.5% compared to a dead/case rate of about 4%. The flu is typically in the range of 0.04%-0.1% with a particularly bad flu at around 0.2%.
Outside of China and Iran, the numbers are dead/resolved of about 35% (overstated because it takes longer to recover than to die), and a dead/case rate of about 3.6% now. There are assuredly cases which were never reported, but probably not 3-8 million that have made it to the symptomatic point, within the countries with reliable reporting.
In the US last Monday, only 40% of the discovered cases were not linked to known cases. That suggests that despite the issues with testing there were probably no more than 1-2 times the unknown cases as known at that point.
And yeah, the Obama-era folks estimates of a *minimum* of 1 million deaths is completely over the top.
Here’s a study from March 1 that put the fatality rate at 5.5-5.9%. https://www.thelancet.com/journals/laninf/article/PIIS1473-3099(20)30195-X/fulltext
“On this basis, using WHO data on the cumulative number of deaths to March 1, 2020, mortality rates would be 5·6% (95% CI 5·4–5·8) for China and 15·2% (12·5–17·9) outside of China. Global mortality rates over time using a 14-day delay estimate are shown in the figure, with a curve that levels off to a rate of 5·7% (5·5–5·9), converging with the current WHO estimates.”
So far, we’re well ahead of the curve, but we’ll see how it goes. I think many states under-reacted, then over-reacted. Many people didn’t bother to prepare even when it became obvious both the extent of danger the disease represented and that it had broken into the wild, then lost their freaking minds.
I suspect a lot of the mind-losing was what happened in NYC with the guy repeatedly travelling through Grand Central Station, then extrapolated across the country.