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Comment by greatpatton | Hacker News Reader

A 20% death rate is highly unlikely.The Italian researchers who sequenced the Italian strain believe that the virus has been circulating widely in Italy since January, even before Italy banned direct air flight to China. This seems to be confirmed by the fact that almost all the new cases in Europe are originating from big Italian cities. If the death rate was 20% we should start to see a lot of death in Italy and it doesn't seem to be the case. Iran and Egypt also seems to be largely hit, as many tourist back from Egypt have been infected. Now getting the real death rate is going to be a very complicated game, especially if many infected patient remain without symptom. I tend to believe the virus is already highly circulating in a high number of place of the planet where the health system is bad, and lacking testing capabilities. We are even starting to see untraceable cases in the USA.

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Caveat: some of the "untraceable" cases are kind of "semi-traceable" in practice. The American government (against the advice of its own CDC) flew back American patients who had been on the Japanese cruise ship, infected and uninfected alike, and sent in HHS employees to interact with them, with inadequate training and hazard protections (i.e., no bunny suits).

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.

I keep hearing about this- is there a source for this? Or drumf is inolved so must be true?

You're mixing up two different evacuations. The whistleblower complaint about HHS employees with inadequate training processing evacuees was about the Wuhan evacuation, not the Diamond Princess one. Only about three of the Wuhan evacuees ever ended up testing positive for the virus, there's no reason to believe they were even infectious when flown back and none of the staff involved have shown signs of COVID-19. It's certainly possible that one of the people involved in the quarantine didn't follow precautions and was infected, even with full training, but I don't think there's any evidence tying the California case to it.

OK — I did conflate Wuhan and Diamond Princess, so thanks for correcting me there, but according to both Time and the Washington Post, HHS employees were sent (without proper training or protection) to meet with evacuees in each case:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2020/02/27/us-workers-...

https://time.com/5792135/coronavirus-whistleblower-hhs-emplo...

If a large population of infected people never show symptoms, you'd see a lot more untraceable cases in Singapore, who are doing tracing very well.

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.

As long as you have enough intensive care units with a lung ventilator that 1-2 % might be correct. But 10% develop pneumonia and require ventilation. If only about 10% of the population gets infected the health system would be overwhelmed. After that, even a simple flu might become a live threating experience.

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