That was a little shocking to read. I had no idea the 1918 influenza pandemic was only 2%. I lost relatives to it, assumed it was a larger percentage than 2%.
"It infected 500 million people around the world,[2] or about 27% of the then world population of between 1.8 and 1.9 billion, including people on isolated Pacific islands and in the Arctic. The death toll is estimated to have been 40 million to 50 million, and possibly as high as 100 million, making it one of the deadliest epidemics in human history"
500 million infected, 40-50 million deaths. Isn't that 10% death rate?
Perhaps it was 2% for people who were treated in hospitals.
the only number I've heard for the attack rate is 30%, from the virologist Ian Mackay, who caveated it as a guess:
https://twitter.com/MackayIM/status/1233511899083530240
it could probably never be anything but a guess, until after the fact.
anyway, it would not be 2% of the US population. it would be 2% of 30% of the US population, which is approximately two million people. with the caveat that all of these numbers are early estimates based on limited data.
2M people is still a lot of deaths.
but it's not just how many people are killed. the rate of hospitalization is 15-25%. approx 10% of patients in Italy right now are in intensive care. the disease expresses as severe pneumonia, so severe that survivors have experienced _organ failure_. you could be hooked to a ventilator for a month.
in the United States, if you survive a medical problem that serious, it still ruins your life. probably this country will see not just a significant number of deaths, but also a spike in medical bankruptcies -- which are already a huge problem here.
I’ve said in other threads: it feels like the US is sleepwalking through this. If the CDC believes, as they said last week, that this will spread inevitably — what exactly are we waiting for? We have two cases of unknown origin in Santa Clara county, yet schools are still open as of now. Wouldn’t it make sense to close them for two weeks now to hopefully slow the spread and give us additional time to ramp up our medical response?
as for the CDC, the Trump administration gutted the CDC in 2018. they fired its leadership and dramatically reduced its budget.
they went to Congress last week or so for an emergency $2.5B, which is better than nothing, but $25B would have been a more realistic number. House leaders were basically complaining like "you should have asked us for more money."
Trump et al also put Mike Pence in charge of the situation last week. Trump said, when announcing that Pence would be in charge, that "he's got a talent for this." however, as governor of Indiana, Pence prioritized ideology over public health, and the state experienced an HIV outbreak due to his leadership (a subsequent Yale study found the outbreak was entirely preventable).
long story short: yes, the Federal government's response is extremely inadequate. it will probably continue to be inadequate throughout the crisis.
The point is to reassure people and to prevent panic. For the vast majority of cases this virus is not a big deal so people should be vigilant but not be overly scared for themselves.
The trade-off between the options is being considered and quarantine is being used.
It also seems like some survivors come out of this with pretty severe damage to their organs, especially lungs, because the persons immune system goes overboard and attacks healthy tissue. So, some fraction of people will live, but be disabled.
This heightened infection risk for the uninfected cruise ship patients and the HHS employees, as well as anybody who knew them.
This plane landed at Travis Air Force Base in Solano County, California. Which is where the first "untraceable" case in the United States occurred.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2020/02/27/us-workers-...
https://time.com/5792135/coronavirus-whistleblower-hhs-emplo...
But if you look at their reports there are practically no untraceable cases. That suggests to me that there are not many cases without symptoms.
[1] https://www.vox.com/2020/2/12/21134718/coronavirus-china-dea...
Obviously those diseases are viral. But it seems that they can be helped by bacteria and certainly bacterial pneumonia is a common serious complication, and I believe that patients hospitalised for COVID-19 are given antibiotics for these reasons.
Press censorship did also contribute to its spread.
"The World Health Organization estimates that 2–3% of those who were infected died (case-fatality ratio).[51]"
"The unusually severe disease killed up to 20% of those infected, as opposed to the usual flu epidemic mortality rate of 0.1%.[2][54]"
In all likelihood, within a year, several people you know will die of covid-19.
(Also note that the effects will be different around the world and in different social strata; in poorer areas, the death rate will be much higher, and in rich areas much lower.)