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This is blatantly untrue. Worst case scenario is currently believed to be 1.7 million deaths. https://thehill.com/homenews/sunday-talk-shows/487652-fauci-offer

This is blatantly untrue. Worst case scenario is currently believed to be 1.7 million deaths. https://thehill.com/homenews/sunday-talk-shows/487652-fauci-offers-updates-on-coronavirus-mitigation-as-administration https://thehill.com/homenews/sunday-talk-shows/487652-fauci-...

crooked-v 7y ago
That only holds if all of the people suffering severe cases can get enough medical care, which becomes much less likely if hospitals get overwhelmed. That's why 'flattening the curve' is extremely important.
- solidasparagus 7y ago
  What are you basing that statement on? The worst case-scenario is based on a scenario where no effort is made to protect against the spread of Coronavirus and I'd imagine the CDC considered the impact of overwhelmed hospitals when doing their analysis.
pmoriarty 7y ago
From a Penn State epidemiologist (note that the quote below speaks of the "infection fatality rate", which is different from the "case fatality rate", the difference is explained in the article)[1]: "Scientists working at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, Imperial College London and the Institute for Disease Modeling have used these approaches to estimate the infection fatality rate. Currently, these estimates range from 0.5% to 0.94% indicating that COVID-19 is about 10 to 20 times as deadly as seasonal influenza. Evidence coming in from genomics and large-scale testing of fevers is consistent with these conclusions. The only potentially good news is that the epidemic in Korea may ultimately show a lower CFR than the epidemic in China. ... "On balance, it is reasonable to guess that COVID-19 will infect as many Americans over the next year as influenza does in a typical winter -- somewhere between 25 million and 115 million. Maybe a bit more if the virus turns out to be more contagious than we thought. Maybe a bit less if we put restrictions in place that minimize our travel and our social and professional contacts. "The bad news is, of course, that these infection numbers translate to 350,000 to 660,000 people dying in the U.S., with an uncertainty range that goes from 50,000 deaths to 5 million deaths. The good news is that this is not a weather forecast. The size of the epidemic, i.e., the total number of infections, is something we can reduce if we decrease our contact patterns and improve our hygiene. If the total number of infections decreases, the total number of deaths will also decrease." This analysis is a little old, however (from March 9th, six days ago), and assumes that the rate of infection of COVID-19 is comparable to seasonal influenza. A recent This Week in Virology podcast[2] had another epidemiologist, Ralph Baric, of the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill, who had this to say: "The R0, or the number of people who become infected from an infected individual, is estimated somewhere between 2.5 and 3.2. That's actually quite high. That means that for every case there is two and a half to three additional cases. Contemporary flu is much closer to 2 or 1.8, 1.6. So this is very explosive spread and rapid transmission. It's even more explosive because you have rare individuals or maybe not so rare individuals who are superspreaders, who can infect 15, 20 people just passing through a room."[3] "In Canada there was one example of a superspreader who simply walked through an emergency room that was packed that was fairly packed with individuals and infected 19 people in the less than the 15 seconds they were in the emergency room as they walked through it."[4] With such explosive growth, the health care systems stands a very good chance of being overwhelmed, causing substantially more deaths. For instance, those 10% to 17% of severe cases that might have otherwise survived had they gotten care in an ICU could well die because they can't get that care. In addition many other, non-infected people who need critical care may not be able to get that care either and die, raising the overall death toll even higher. [1] - https://www.marketwatch.com/story/why-this-epidemiologist-is-more-worried-about-coronavirus-than-he-was-a-month-ago-2020-03-09 https://www.marketwatch.com/story/why-this-epidemiologist-is... [2] - http://www.microbe.tv/twiv/twiv-591/ http://www.microbe.tv/twiv/twiv-591/ [3] - about 8 minutes in to the program [4] - about 38 minutes in to the program
- solidasparagus 7y ago
  Are you suggesting that the CDC didn't consider the impact to the healthcare system when doing their epidemiological projections? I think you are severely underestimating the CDC's competence.
grecy 7y ago
This CDC article [1] Estimates worst case at 1.7 million deaths. Let's dig into that. They say it could be up to 214 million infected ( which is 64.8% of the population, so my number differs from theirs by 5.2%), but they say only 1.7 million deaths. That's a CDC projected death rate of 0.8% .... which is extremely optimistic. The WHO says 3.4% [2] China 3.6% - 6.1% [2] Italy 3-4% [2] So I have no idea why the CDC would make their estimates based on a 0.8% death rate. That doesn't seem realistic to me, especially when we know the US has less hospital beds per capita than for example Italy. [1] https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2020/03/cdcs-worst-case-coronavirus-model-210m-infected-1-7m-dead.html https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2020/03/cdcs-worst-case-coro... [2] https://medium.com/@tomaspueyo/coronavirus-act-today-or-people-will-die-f4d3d9cd99ca https://medium.com/@tomaspueyo/coronavirus-act-today-or-peop...
- solidasparagus 7y ago
  So first off I've spent enough time with people in epidemiology/at the CDC to know that I (and probably you) don't know enough to have a more accurate armchair analysis than what their experts produce. Second, I would imagine ICU/critical care beds per capita is a better predictor of fatality rate than hospital beds and the US is very well equipped in that regard. The US medical system has numerous flaws, but in terms of technical ability to keep extremely sick people alive, the US is pretty good. We can debate the details, but since neither of us are experts it's probably a waste of time. However, there is absolutely no basis to say "best-case estimates right now have US deaths at 2 million". It is blatantly untrue - it directly contradicts every single expert analysis that I have seen.
- tathougies 7y ago
  The us has more icu beds than italy.
  - stevekemp 7y ago
    Percapita? Obviously there are more American ICU beds in absolute numbers, but also there is a bigger population.
- thu2111 7y ago

crooked-v 7y ago

That only holds if all of the people suffering severe cases can get enough medical care, which becomes much less likely if hospitals get overwhelmed. That's why 'flattening the curve' is extremely important.

solidasparagus 7y ago
What are you basing that statement on? The worst case-scenario is based on a scenario where no effort is made to protect against the spread of Coronavirus and I'd imagine the CDC considered the impact of overwhelmed hospitals when doing their analysis.

pmoriarty 7y ago

From a Penn State epidemiologist (note that the quote below speaks of the "infection fatality rate", which is different from the "case fatality rate", the difference is explained in the article)[1]: "Scientists working at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, Imperial College London and the Institute for Disease Modeling have used these approaches to estimate the infection fatality rate. Currently, these estimates range from 0.5% to 0.94% indicating that COVID-19 is about 10 to 20 times as deadly as seasonal influenza. Evidence coming in from genomics and large-scale testing of fevers is consistent with these conclusions. The only potentially good news is that the epidemic in Korea may ultimately show a lower CFR than the epidemic in China. ... "On balance, it is reasonable to guess that COVID-19 will infect as many Americans over the next year as influenza does in a typical winter -- somewhere between 25 million and 115 million. Maybe a bit more if the virus turns out to be more contagious than we thought. Maybe a bit less if we put restrictions in place that minimize our travel and our social and professional contacts. "The bad news is, of course, that these infection numbers translate to 350,000 to 660,000 people dying in the U.S., with an uncertainty range that goes from 50,000 deaths to 5 million deaths. The good news is that this is not a weather forecast. The size of the epidemic, i.e., the total number of infections, is something we can reduce if we decrease our contact patterns and improve our hygiene. If the total number of infections decreases, the total number of deaths will also decrease." This analysis is a little old, however (from March 9th, six days ago), and assumes that the rate of infection of COVID-19 is comparable to seasonal influenza. A recent This Week in Virology podcast[2] had another epidemiologist, Ralph Baric, of the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill, who had this to say: "The R0, or the number of people who become infected from an infected individual, is estimated somewhere between 2.5 and 3.2. That's actually quite high. That means that for every case there is two and a half to three additional cases. Contemporary flu is much closer to 2 or 1.8, 1.6. So this is very explosive spread and rapid transmission. It's even more explosive because you have rare individuals or maybe not so rare individuals who are superspreaders, who can infect 15, 20 people just passing through a room."[3] "In Canada there was one example of a superspreader who simply walked through an emergency room that was packed that was fairly packed with individuals and infected 19 people in the less than the 15 seconds they were in the emergency room as they walked through it."[4] With such explosive growth, the health care systems stands a very good chance of being overwhelmed, causing substantially more deaths. For instance, those 10% to 17% of severe cases that might have otherwise survived had they gotten care in an ICU could well die because they can't get that care. In addition many other, non-infected people who need critical care may not be able to get that care either and die, raising the overall death toll even higher. [1] - https://www.marketwatch.com/story/why-this-epidemiologist-is-more-worried-about-coronavirus-than-he-was-a-month-ago-2020-03-09 https://www.marketwatch.com/story/why-this-epidemiologist-is... [2] - http://www.microbe.tv/twiv/twiv-591/ http://www.microbe.tv/twiv/twiv-591/ [3] - about 8 minutes in to the program [4] - about 38 minutes in to the program

solidasparagus 7y ago
Are you suggesting that the CDC didn't consider the impact to the healthcare system when doing their epidemiological projections? I think you are severely underestimating the CDC's competence.

grecy 7y ago

This CDC article [1] Estimates worst case at 1.7 million deaths. Let's dig into that. They say it could be up to 214 million infected ( which is 64.8% of the population, so my number differs from theirs by 5.2%), but they say only 1.7 million deaths. That's a CDC projected death rate of 0.8% .... which is extremely optimistic. The WHO says 3.4% [2] China 3.6% - 6.1% [2] Italy 3-4% [2] So I have no idea why the CDC would make their estimates based on a 0.8% death rate. That doesn't seem realistic to me, especially when we know the US has less hospital beds per capita than for example Italy. [1] https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2020/03/cdcs-worst-case-coronavirus-model-210m-infected-1-7m-dead.html https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2020/03/cdcs-worst-case-coro... [2] https://medium.com/@tomaspueyo/coronavirus-act-today-or-people-will-die-f4d3d9cd99ca https://medium.com/@tomaspueyo/coronavirus-act-today-or-peop...

solidasparagus 7y ago
So first off I've spent enough time with people in epidemiology/at the CDC to know that I (and probably you) don't know enough to have a more accurate armchair analysis than what their experts produce. Second, I would imagine ICU/critical care beds per capita is a better predictor of fatality rate than hospital beds and the US is very well equipped in that regard. The US medical system has numerous flaws, but in terms of technical ability to keep extremely sick people alive, the US is pretty good. We can debate the details, but since neither of us are experts it's probably a waste of time. However, there is absolutely no basis to say "best-case estimates right now have US deaths at 2 million". It is blatantly untrue - it directly contradicts every single expert analysis that I have seen.
tathougies 7y ago
The us has more icu beds than italy.
- stevekemp 7y ago
  Percapita? Obviously there are more American ICU beds in absolute numbers, but also there is a bigger population.
thu2111 7y ago