2 ms·

If everyone in the world were suddenly infected today and the onset would be, say, five days, the world would be in a mayhem in a week. The current fatality rat

If everyone in the world were suddenly infected today and the onset would be, say, five days, the world would be in a mayhem in a week. The current fatality rate in countries such as Japan that doesn't have overloaded medical system, may seem low, but: 1) it's low because the system isn't overloaded. When overloaded, it starts to rise as the patients with heavy symptoms just die. 2) at a stage of a epidemic, it affects infra, which has feedback loop effects. 3) (for the sake of an argument) two percent of humanity is still 156 million people. A death sentence for 156 million people? That's harsh.

primordiaal 7y ago
Indeed, overloaded medical system = high mortality. To give a concrete example: recently there was a video report in Chinese state TV showing a heroic tag-team (doctors+nurses) doing 6 intubations per hour. Note: intubation is practically the last stage before you end up in a body bag. That's a crazy number of intubations/hour for a single team. In such circumstances, you're guaranteed to get less-than-perfect recovery rate due to cross-infection. Slow rate of infection is key to low mortality.