From what I’ve gleaned, the death rate is under 2% if a patient has access to 1st world ICU level treatment.
But once a medical system is overwhelmed, as in China, all bets are off, and the death rate could go to 20%.
If you look at stats from the epicenter of this in China, Hubei province, it is over 30%.
https://gisanddata.maps.arcgis.com/apps/opsdashboard/index.html#/bda7594740fd40299423467b48e9ecf6
That appears to be a generally sound opinion (although the illness plays out over 21 days, with a lot of fatalities in Week 3), so it's a bit premature.
The problem is, there is essentially no surge capacity for that level of care.
Japan has been very generous to take 140 people off that ship and put them in what amounts to BL3 isolation - but they could not, and should not be asked, to do that for 4000 people. That would crash their care system, denying care to many other people with equally serious needs.
I like the island idea. There are going to need to be large, open air quarantine facilities all over the world, I agree that keeping 3500 passengers on that ship is brutal, but as of this morning, all the alternatives, including sinking the ship in international waters, are worse.
If true mortality is 2% and the virus spreads worldwide as it has in China, ICU care will not be made available to people in quarantine/isolation, because it will be impossible to do.
Of course the mortality is probably higher than reported. It could be much higher. But it is more likely for cases to be underreported by multiples than mortality to be underreported by those same multiples.
Dearth rate is lot higher than 2%. china has mandated the doctors list other causes of death. Plus anyone too sick is not admitted to hospitals and die outside. Not tested? OK died of food poisoning or something.
That’s what worries me. There aren’t that many ICU units available in the developed world - then number is scaled to normal expected critical case load. If this things gets out of control, those ICUs get filled up fast and then what?
The thing is that we don’t know what this would look like in the wild of a Western Country because we’ve been able to contain it so far.
The West is about six weeks to two months behind the China Timeline.
The issues start if there are enough cases to fill the local ICUs and Intermediate Care facilities.
When that happens, we can start making some judgements about the west.
I am hoping that we do not get to find out.
“But once a medical system is overwhelmed, as in China, all bets are off, and the death rate could go to 20%.”
Oh, and thanks for all that you have done - in the service and since you started writing and posting for the general public. Wish we had many more like you.
The Chicoms told WHO they were not including asymptomatic infections in their numbers yesterday which means their already questionable numbers are REALLY questionable at this point. I have never believed the Chicom numbers about their economies and I certainly don’t believe their CoronaV numbers.
I suspect their numbers could be 10-25X what they are reporting and you are probably in the ballpark. I hope Trump is preparing for the worse and get ahead of this incoming mess because the Democrats will hang it around his neck like Katrina and Bush.
Using the dubious numbers China is posting as tabulated by Johns Hopkins site, the death rate in Hubei is 32%, with only 39 deaths to 1724 recovered for 2.2% outside of it.
There are 27 recovered outside of China, with only 1 death. Technically 4%, but obviously sample size dominates.