What makes you say that this isn't the Spanish flu? If we look at the mortality rate in places that are doing heavy testing, such the Diamond Princess and Sout

What makes you say that this isn't the Spanish flu? If we look at the mortality rate in places that are doing heavy testing, such the Diamond Princess and South Korea, it looks like we have slightly below a 1% fatality rate among people who test positive assuming adequate modern medical care for everyone. The CDC's worst case scenario is 1.7 million dead in the US. Some British epidemic modelers put it closer to 2.2 million dead in the US assuming no health care overload. But of course, medical systems in Lombardy, Washington and the Bay Area are already stretched to the limit. Wuhan had 80,000 patients and had to be reinforced by multiple Chinese provinces. And these overloads were with just a few 10s of thousands infected. The natural peak, assuming current numbers are correct, would far exceed our medical system's ability to cope. At which point that 2.2 million number goes up. I've been staring at the numbers, running the calculations, and I keep getting roughly the same worst case answers as the CDC. Unless there's some critical number that we're missing, we're in an ugly fight until we have a vaccine, or treatments that allow most people to breathe unaided. Until then, our best hope is to figure how to live life outside lockdown while preventing exponential growth.