We’re going to get a good read on the fatality rate of the virus from the 600+ people infected on the Princess. All of them will be observed and we’ll know within a month how many of them got seriously ill, and how many died. Plus, we’ll get an idea as to the mortality rate for different ages and conditioning.
Assuming those numbers are flu-like, and not MERS-like, or worse, ebola-like, then it might make sense to just let it escape into the general population throughout the world, especially since that looks likely to happen anyway. Hundreds of thousands of people die each winter of the flu complications and we get by without shutting down world commerce. That might be the best way to go with this coronavirus too, and we should soon have answers from the Princess situation.
In fact, that looks to me like exactly what China is doing right now, i.e., just sending people back to work, because there’s no way they’ve contained it to the extent they’re currently reporting. They’re just making up the numbers and getting their economy going again. Ironically, that might turn out to be a rational decision. Or, if they’re wrong, millions might die.
Incidentally, it’s looking like the Trump administration made a good call stopping all flights from China early in the process. If we have to contain it here, we at least now have a chance of succeeding. But if it runs rampant in most other countries, well, you probably can’t cut us off from the entire world.
you probably can’t cut us off from the entire world.
Monroe Doctrine time.
My present “take”, subject to change as more info. comes in, goes like this:
I’ll assume the flu this year is approximately as bad as last year. (If solid numbers otherwise are available, someone please inform us.)
ON AVERAGE, 65 - 70% of hospital beds, ICU’s, and advanced respiratory aid are in use — this must be higher in a bad flu season, but I’m not sure how much higher. I’ll pull a number out of the air and guess maybe 80% at the point this coronavirus really gets going in the US.
So far, it appears the rate of serious and critical cases caused by COVID-19 is higher than flu, and it is more contagious than flu. Plus we’ll have no vaccine for COVID-19 for at least several months. If all those factors result in as little as 2x the number of serious and critical cases caused by flu, then we’ll need 240% of current available resources to treat everybody.
China has fewer resources (hospital beds, ICU’s, etc.) per person than does the US, and many more people with damaged lungs (smoking, pollution), tho’ I’d expect the latter and likely the former to also show up in their flu mortality numbers, serious case numbers, etc. Any way one looks at it, China ultimately has to decide between the harm and deaths a badly damaged economy will cause, compared to the deaths COVID-19 may cause.
current death rate is 2.3%, multiplied times all 1.45 billion chinese and you are correct millions will die
if they are wrong and china’s real rate is far higher - why do they need 49 crematoriums doing about 250 bodies each daily plus 40 more industrial furnaces - the real number may be a double digit percentage
china has to send people back yo work or let the rest of their economy collapse - if more die of no consequence just more burning more replacements
yes always a good idea to let a bioweapon, that looks like the common flu, escape into the rest of the world - what could go wrong?