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The Diamond Princess was the perfect model that had over 4400 people on board with the virus for two months. Central air conditioning throughout, central heating, common dining room for everyone and so on. Of those aboard 17 percent got the disease (696) and of those 7 died, which was about one tenth of one percent of its population!! Those ships have a preponderance of the aged, compared to general populations. This is the best example to date of a controlled epidemic on a sealed metal can, and you can see the numbers don’t fit the roomers hype!

You are exactly right. The Diamond Princess was an enclosed petri dish yet ~17% were infected. As you state a cruise ship population likely skews older than the general population as well.

Shutting the entire world down does not compute based on the known facts and data. There is possibly something much bigger/different at play but I have no idea what it is.

The problem with using that kind of data is that while the Diamond Princess was a perfect laboratory the time of observation is not sufficient. I provide a further breakdown showing that the disease was in it's early stages and additional deaths are likely to have occurred in the weeks that followed changing the estimated fatality rate.

As of March 15 in 2020, the total number of confirmed cases with coronavirus disease (COVID-19) on the cruise ship Diamond Princess reached 712 patients, including 567 passengers and 145 crews.

As of February 20, tests of most of the 3,711 people aboard the Diamond Princess confirmed that 634, or 17 percent, had the virus; 328 of them did not have symptoms at the time of diagnosis. Of those with symptoms, the fatality ratio was 1.9 percent, Russell and colleagues calculate. Of all infected, that ratio was 0.91 percent. Those 70 and older were most vulnerable, with an overall fatality ratio of about 7.3 percent.

Mortality numbers lag behind infection numbers simply because it takes days to weeks for severely ill people to die of COVID-19. Thus, current death rates should properly be divided by the number of known infections from the previous week or two, researchers wrote in February in Swiss Medical Weekly.

There are some fairly heavy modifications to that, especially since the first infected individual didn’t likely interact with all that many people (and may not have even been contagious the whole time). As I recall, after the infected individual came down with the disease (elsewhere), they began confining people to either their quarters or their patios (for those who had them) just off their quarters. Contact as a method of spread was greatly inhibited. While infection can occur through the vents, it is much less able to occur than being in the same room. Severe efforts were being made by the staff to disinfect and avoid exposure, and were taking food to the passengers rather than having them leave their room.

Of those aboard 17 percent got the disease (696) and of those 7 died, which was about one tenth of one percent of its population!!

It’ll be an interesting study, especially considering that the ship procedures were set up to deal with outbreaks of various diseases and are generally successful. It could be a lot, or it could be surprisingly little when considering the actual conditions and events.

Not to quibble, but it is 743 infected and 7 deaths, with only 325 reported as recovered. Regardless here, the death rate is much lower than elsewhere, which is good news.