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Half the population becoming infected this year is not that unlikely if no preventive measures are taken. The CDC and WHO stopped being reputable sites about a

Half the population becoming infected this year is not that unlikely if no preventive measures are taken. The CDC and WHO stopped being reputable sites about a month ago.

NicolasGorden 7y ago
Ok, so then where did the stats come from? What is your reputable source of information if you think the CDC and WHO aren't reputable. I'm open to learning, maybe you can teach me.
- claudeganon 7y ago
  The current rate of estimated infection doubling from genomic analysis is 7 days, absent containment measures and other interventions. Assume there are 1000 cases today and do the math. You get there pretty quick: https://bedford.io/blog/ncov-cryptic-transmission/ https://bedford.io/blog/ncov-cryptic-transmission/
  - NicolasGorden 7y ago
    > Half the population becoming infected this year is not that unlikely > where did the stats come from? Maybe I misread it, but your article does not corroborate the 50% infection of the US population.
    - lern_too_spel 7y ago
      Assuming a mortality rate of 1%, only 55 million people, or about 1/6 of the US population will need to be infected to reach 550k deaths directly from COVID-19. The 1/6 and 1% numbers are both conservative. Hence, at least 10x the flu. The indirect deaths will be larger still because 10x more will be hospitalized, which the medical infrastructure is not prepared to handle.
    - claudeganon 7y ago
      Apologies, I linked the wrong thing. This can be extrapolated from what the American Hospital Association is projecting: https://www.businessinsider.com/presentation-us-hospitals-preparing-for-millions-of-hospitalizations-2020-3 https://www.businessinsider.com/presentation-us-hospitals-pr... As the article also references, Marc Lipsitch at Harvard projects the same.
      - NicolasGorden 7y ago
        My point was people's reaction is probably the main issue. And I tried to illustrate how illogical it is based on the risks people take when it comes to things that are currently proven to be deadly, not maybe deadly. The other day someone complained to me about the dangers of Corona Virus WHILE smoking a cigarette! (blew my mind, though I didn't say anything) The overreaction is perfectly illustrated by Marc Lipsitch who estimated 70% of the world population will have Corona Virus before the years end. At 7 billion, and with 3% death rate, it would mean 147,000,000 million dead by the year's end. I think we can agree that this is a VERY extraordinary assertion. I seem to also remember him making similar claims about SARS and MERS in years past. But going back to his extraordinary claims, even if this virus was 10x as deadly as ALL the flu strains put together we'd still be talking about 3 to 6 million dead world wide (high no doubt, but still less than tobacco deaths which stand at 7 million/year) By calculating 10x all flus we are actually calculating 30-100x worse than any single virus strain we know, since the 'flu' is an umbrella for many different viral strains. So basically, IF this virus was 100x worse than any previous virus, we'd see Lipsitch is exaggerating by a factor of 50x. And if this new virus is 'only' as bad as regular 'colds', he'd be exaggerating by 5,000x. There seems to be a feedback loop: the more people get scared, the more the media sells fear. The more the media sells fear, the more scared they become. Again, I can't stress this enough, Corona Virus is real, it needs to be addressed, our leaders need to make it a priority. People will die and we should avoid it. But also true is people need to stop fretting over things they can't control and the media needs to stop whipping them into a frenzy with fear mongering tactics. They should be using this to remind people that they should ALWAYS, every year, get their flu shot. That they should ALWAYS wash their hands, not just when they fear Corona Virus. Overreactions can be just as bad as under reactions and humans have a long history of mass hysteria that only make things worse.

Half the population becoming infected this year is not that unlikely if no preventive measures are taken. The CDC and WHO stopped being reputable sites about a month ago.

NicolasGorden 7y ago

Ok, so then where did the stats come from? What is your reputable source of information if you think the CDC and WHO aren't reputable. I'm open to learning, maybe you can teach me.

claudeganon 7y ago
The current rate of estimated infection doubling from genomic analysis is 7 days, absent containment measures and other interventions. Assume there are 1000 cases today and do the math. You get there pretty quick: https://bedford.io/blog/ncov-cryptic-transmission/ https://bedford.io/blog/ncov-cryptic-transmission/
- NicolasGorden 7y ago
  > Half the population becoming infected this year is not that unlikely > where did the stats come from? Maybe I misread it, but your article does not corroborate the 50% infection of the US population.
  - lern_too_spel 7y ago
    Assuming a mortality rate of 1%, only 55 million people, or about 1/6 of the US population will need to be infected to reach 550k deaths directly from COVID-19. The 1/6 and 1% numbers are both conservative. Hence, at least 10x the flu. The indirect deaths will be larger still because 10x more will be hospitalized, which the medical infrastructure is not prepared to handle.
  - claudeganon 7y ago
    Apologies, I linked the wrong thing. This can be extrapolated from what the American Hospital Association is projecting: https://www.businessinsider.com/presentation-us-hospitals-preparing-for-millions-of-hospitalizations-2020-3 https://www.businessinsider.com/presentation-us-hospitals-pr... As the article also references, Marc Lipsitch at Harvard projects the same.
    - NicolasGorden 7y ago
      My point was people's reaction is probably the main issue. And I tried to illustrate how illogical it is based on the risks people take when it comes to things that are currently proven to be deadly, not maybe deadly. The other day someone complained to me about the dangers of Corona Virus WHILE smoking a cigarette! (blew my mind, though I didn't say anything) The overreaction is perfectly illustrated by Marc Lipsitch who estimated 70% of the world population will have Corona Virus before the years end. At 7 billion, and with 3% death rate, it would mean 147,000,000 million dead by the year's end. I think we can agree that this is a VERY extraordinary assertion. I seem to also remember him making similar claims about SARS and MERS in years past. But going back to his extraordinary claims, even if this virus was 10x as deadly as ALL the flu strains put together we'd still be talking about 3 to 6 million dead world wide (high no doubt, but still less than tobacco deaths which stand at 7 million/year) By calculating 10x all flus we are actually calculating 30-100x worse than any single virus strain we know, since the 'flu' is an umbrella for many different viral strains. So basically, IF this virus was 100x worse than any previous virus, we'd see Lipsitch is exaggerating by a factor of 50x. And if this new virus is 'only' as bad as regular 'colds', he'd be exaggerating by 5,000x. There seems to be a feedback loop: the more people get scared, the more the media sells fear. The more the media sells fear, the more scared they become. Again, I can't stress this enough, Corona Virus is real, it needs to be addressed, our leaders need to make it a priority. People will die and we should avoid it. But also true is people need to stop fretting over things they can't control and the media needs to stop whipping them into a frenzy with fear mongering tactics. They should be using this to remind people that they should ALWAYS, every year, get their flu shot. That they should ALWAYS wash their hands, not just when they fear Corona Virus. Overreactions can be just as bad as under reactions and humans have a long history of mass hysteria that only make things worse.