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Just as interesting, in hindsight, is the sidebar link: "Why The World Cares More About The New Coronavirus Than The Flu" -- February 3, 2020: > By contrast [w
by ken 7y ago
Just as interesting, in hindsight, is the sidebar link: "Why The World Cares More About The New Coronavirus Than The Flu" -- February 3, 2020:
> By contrast [with the flu], this new coronavirus has only just started circulating in humans. "We basically have the opportunity to prevent spread of a new respiratory disease in the first place," says Althaus.
- kadoban 7y agoDo we though? How? It has already spread as far as I can tell. Maybe back in early Februrary it seemed more containable, not anymore though. The reason I care more about ncov is it's about to overwhelm our hospitals far past capacity and even without that has what seems to be a _much_ higher fatality rate than the flu.
- cbhl 7y agoThe confirmed case graphs have a lag time of a week or two, because you can only get a test after you start showing symptoms, and they take a long time to run. We also don't know what the graphs would have looked like if we didn't enact social distancing -- even if the graph is not flattening right away, it doesn't mean that we should give up. For all we know, the graph could be way worse without these measures (assuming a hypothetical world where we have perfect knowledge and have enough PPE and swabs and machines to test every person who suspects they have COVID-19, which the US currently doesn't). Please don't give up!