Mar 18th 2020, 12:57:52
Bug is right.
Look at what is happening in Italy. their numbers are out of whack because they have an old population admittedly (60% of their population is over 40, and 25% or thereabouts is over 65), but their high fatality rate (about 8% at present) is less because of that and more because their health system is utterly overwhelmed.
They are literally having to choose which severe cases can have the treatments and specialised machinery neccessary, and who can't, and will therefore die.
Here in Western Australia for example, we have a total of 250 oxygen ventilators, with 50 more on the way. these are actively neccessary for that 5% of the absolute worst cases. this isn't the 20% of cases that are severe, just the absolute worst.
Even if we assumed a 1% extreme case rate, being extra generous, any more than 25000 cases of coronavirus means that someone is going to die here, not because of the disease, but because we simply won't have the equipment to save them.
And that's BEFORE we factor in that other people are still critically ill, and require ventilators for other purposes.
They also can't be shared whilst needed either.
Currently we have 31 confirmed cases (WA only. the rest of aus is close to 500 now, with NSW picking up like another 60 cases just today). However, we (WA only again)are currently ONLY testing those who have come in from overseas, or who have had direct confirmed demonstrable contact with someone who is actively demonstrated to have coronavirus. which means that we are effectively NOT testing for community transmission at all. Indeed, we are actively turning people away from testing, because of testing kit hortages.
Also for the record, the rate is only 3.4% (at present) because of places like South Korea, Singapore, Hong Kong and Taiwan, who have all done serious epidemics with SARS and MERS in the recent past, and as a result, have the skills and experience to cope properly. The US on the other hand, simply doesn't.
a) because the last epidemic this bad for the US was back in 1918/19, b) because Trump has bungled the US response to this from the outset, and c) because he fired your specialist pandemic response team back in 2018, and d) because too many of you literally don't take this seriously.
To put it into a better perspective for you, the mortality rate on actual influenza is 0.06%. roughly. the LOWEST death rate for Covid19, which is in South Korea, is 0.6%. that's 10x the rate at which people die from the flu. in italy, at 8%, thats better than 133x the rate.
even at 1%, that's literally 1 in every 100 people. that's someone that YOU know directly that will likely die from it. at 3.4%, it's about 1 in every 30 people, which means multiple people you directly know who are likely to die from it. And those numbers jump in those over 50, and over 60 in particular. over 60, it's something like a 15-18% mortality rate, which is down to somewhere between 1 in 7 and 1 in 5 people roughly dying from it.