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I agree that "millions will die" is just pure panic. But I'd like to point out that China is most definitely _not_ out of the woods yet. And won't be until ther

by m0zg 7y ago

I agree that "millions will die" is just pure panic. But I'd like to point out that China is most definitely _not_ out of the woods yet. And won't be until there's a cure. This merry-go-round could start again there at a moment's notice.

saiya-jin 7y ago
I don't get this sentiment, I mean numbers are pretty clear at this point. We have +-2% mortality rate, and that when system is not utterly overloaded and those critical patients (15-20%) are getting artificial ventilation and very personalized treatment. Without it, most if not all would die. So real mortality, once health systems will crumble from the load (we will see in 1 week here in Europe), might be more around 10%. Not many seem to like to accept this simple fact, happy to hear where my conclusion is wrong. I mean if you have water/mucus in your lungs, that's it, very little can be done. If we take >50% of earth population would eventually take it (which seems more realistic, since we have no vaccine, and no effective treatment and those won't work very well in many places like India or most of Africa), we're talking about 80 million - 400 million of dead (2-10% of 4 billions). I don't see how we can avoid this - we can't shutdown whole global economy for even 6 months, whole system didn't evolve with this safeguard in mind. People will have to start working again. Producing food, goods, services etc. Now lets be skeptical and have only 10% of those horrible numbers coming true - still talking about 8-40 millions of dead.
- m0zg 7y ago
  You're confusing things. Not everyone who has the disease is diagnosed or treated in a hospital. In fact the majority of people are probably not. As the healthcare system is stressed, you will see higher "mortality" in the hospital cases because only the extremely severe patients will seek treatment and the rest will try to get by on their own. None of this is _population_ mortality. Meaning, these numbers cannot be extrapolated to the population as a whole, due to the selection bias inherent in them, and the lack of accurate infection rate estimates.
  - saiya-jin 7y ago
    That would cover the sceptical 10%. But OK, lets be really sceptical and have only 1% - still 800k - 4 millions. Sounds a bit like millions to me
    - m0zg 7y ago
      This ignores several things. For one thing we might get a reprieve due to seasonality. For another, better treatments will almost certainly be found in the near future. Some are undergoing trials as we speak. Then there's the issue of people who will acquire immunity and therefore cease to be transmission vectors. And then there's the most glaring issue: less than 6K people are likely to die in the _very epicenter_ of the epidemic: in China. Out of 55M people in that region. People are returning to work there now. So this can be contained, with drastic measures. And you can bet drastic measures will be taken if we even begin to approach seven figure casualty counts. Extrapolated from 55M Hubei population to 331M of US population, this would be less than 40K dead: on the order of a severe flu season, but compressed into 3 months. That's in the absence of any advanced treatments, and with a healthcare system arguably inferior to what you'd find in the West.
- cmendel 7y ago
  Sure, though that number that you have memorized for the world population is wrong. We're at approx 7.8 billion rather than 4 billion.

by m0zg 7y ago

saiya-jin 7y ago

I don't get this sentiment, I mean numbers are pretty clear at this point. We have +-2% mortality rate, and that when system is not utterly overloaded and those critical patients (15-20%) are getting artificial ventilation and very personalized treatment. Without it, most if not all would die. So real mortality, once health systems will crumble from the load (we will see in 1 week here in Europe), might be more around 10%. Not many seem to like to accept this simple fact, happy to hear where my conclusion is wrong. I mean if you have water/mucus in your lungs, that's it, very little can be done. If we take >50% of earth population would eventually take it (which seems more realistic, since we have no vaccine, and no effective treatment and those won't work very well in many places like India or most of Africa), we're talking about 80 million - 400 million of dead (2-10% of 4 billions). I don't see how we can avoid this - we can't shutdown whole global economy for even 6 months, whole system didn't evolve with this safeguard in mind. People will have to start working again. Producing food, goods, services etc. Now lets be skeptical and have only 10% of those horrible numbers coming true - still talking about 8-40 millions of dead.

m0zg 7y ago
You're confusing things. Not everyone who has the disease is diagnosed or treated in a hospital. In fact the majority of people are probably not. As the healthcare system is stressed, you will see higher "mortality" in the hospital cases because only the extremely severe patients will seek treatment and the rest will try to get by on their own. None of this is _population_ mortality. Meaning, these numbers cannot be extrapolated to the population as a whole, due to the selection bias inherent in them, and the lack of accurate infection rate estimates.
- saiya-jin 7y ago
  That would cover the sceptical 10%. But OK, lets be really sceptical and have only 1% - still 800k - 4 millions. Sounds a bit like millions to me
  - m0zg 7y ago
    This ignores several things. For one thing we might get a reprieve due to seasonality. For another, better treatments will almost certainly be found in the near future. Some are undergoing trials as we speak. Then there's the issue of people who will acquire immunity and therefore cease to be transmission vectors. And then there's the most glaring issue: less than 6K people are likely to die in the _very epicenter_ of the epidemic: in China. Out of 55M people in that region. People are returning to work there now. So this can be contained, with drastic measures. And you can bet drastic measures will be taken if we even begin to approach seven figure casualty counts. Extrapolated from 55M Hubei population to 331M of US population, this would be less than 40K dead: on the order of a severe flu season, but compressed into 3 months. That's in the absence of any advanced treatments, and with a healthcare system arguably inferior to what you'd find in the West.
cmendel 7y ago
Sure, though that number that you have memorized for the world population is wrong. We're at approx 7.8 billion rather than 4 billion.