I’ve posted several times (though maybe not in here) that the Princess cruise ship will give us a very good estimate of the death rate if we just follow the first 600 cases. We can probably assume they’re getting reasonable care, for starters. With a total sample of 600, it will even be possible to break it into several subgroups by age ranges, sex, some pre-existing conditions, and ethnicity, for example.
We know they all have it, and by a month from now we’ll know how many survived, how many required acute care, and how many died. That will be the best sample we have, in my opinion anyway. And if it turns out to be low, say one percent or so, we’ll be able to relax a bit even if it spreads widely. But if it’s much above that....Well, one percent is over 3 million in the U.S. alone, and over 70 million world wide.
The cruise liner is a decent example, I suppose, but I think the care received in a US hospital is far better than the care received in a Chinese hospital. Their government’s valuation of life is far less than ours from what I’ve read.
I had corona a few years back, and I know because I was hospitalized at the time, and they had to find out if a cold I developed was a problem. So, they tested, and it came back corona. They wore masks, put signs on my door, etc.
It truly was like a cold, and it went away after a few days.
We’re hearing that the worst cases are among the elderly, and I just read one comment that spoke of how huge smoking is in Asia.
All of this is just to say there are a lot of variables.