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> It is only somewhat worse than typical flu

Yes, and that's why Italy is in full lockdown, and the world economy in tanking for a week now, because "it's just the flu bro".

> get a pulse oximeter, oxygen tanks, reduction and mask, disinfectants (esp. water treatment) and about month store of easily digestible, easy to prepare food, and certainly water to smooth over any interruptions.

The majority of americans are living paycheck to paychek and you're telling them to setup a basic hospital in their living room. People are dying of diabetes in that country, do you think they can afford all that and a month of supply if they can't afford insulin to literally save their life ?

Some of you are so out of touch with reality, that's the terrifying part for me. Recommending vitamin C is laughable at that point.

Yes, that is exactly why everyone is in lockdown, because there is enough panic and nothing more can be done. So anything that seems politically acceptable is being done. It won't be effective and is at best false sense of security. It is about as effective as quarantining kids after mumps outbreaks, which is not much, and this thing spreads quicker. The question is not if, but when you will be infected, and if your immune system will be able to handle it. For most, it will be a cold, for the others where it won't, unless they have their own hardware, they're screwed. As seen in Italy. Chinese were able to spin up hospitals, most everyone else does not have enough hardware.

Hospitals get overloaded with about few hundred cases, give or take.

Coronavirus tests are not effective preventative measures. (Not yet anyway.)

Good pulse oximeter costs maybe $20, an O2 tank with hardware and mask $80-100. If you cannot afford that, you're literally screwed. I bet you would pay more off a copay for a bed in the US. If that's the case, good luck.

If you cannot afford food, you're also screwed, there's no charity that will help. As a reminder, many people died from Spanish Flu due to malnutrition. And old age. This combination is also problematic for COVID-19. Strict isolation measures do not work reliably against this kind of virus. They did not work for flu nor for cold, they won't for this one. They can at best slow it down a bit and delay, which is ok if you use this time to do something meaningful - China did, others cannot.

Government could try to help with this but US is allergic to handouts. There is enough food and production capability to distribute rations if need be. I hope they're being stockpiled. Probably are not.

> It won't be effective and is at best false sense of security. It is about as effective as quarantining kids after mumps outbreaks

The whole point of slowing down (or stopping) movements is to slow down the spread enough to let hospitals handle as few sick people at once as possible. Western europeans countries have very good health systems as long as they're not overcrowded. It really isn't rocket science. If you have 2000 beds and 6000 sick people you're fucked, if you have the same amount of beds and a continuous flow of low amount of sick people spread over weeks or months it's just a bit worse than business as usual.

It's not panicking, it's taking steps to ensure the virus doesn't get more serious than it is.

Recovery takes too long for such preventative measures to matter at all. It increases the delay but does not reduce load.

The hospitals explode almost immediately with medium to hard cases.

(We know thanks to Chinese data that recovery can easily be a month for harder cases. We know how fast medical systems get overwhelmed, and how much overcapacity would be necessary.)

Well, we'll see how it develops, it's too early to tell but it'll be easy to compare France/Italy to the US.

Not op but want to comment on how similar the situation is to something ycombinator folks might have more experience with: its essentially a DDOS attack, because the time it takes to scale resources to meet demand is longer than the rate of growth of requests.

It is "terrifying" (may be bit of an exaggeration, I'd call it deeply worrying) because if people who are sick is not tested, and is afraid of staying at home due to job concern and/or not caring since the disease is mild, they'd be spreading it further.

The sickness is not very serious for the young and healthy, it is quite deadly or the elderly (21%+ for 80+ people https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/coronavirus-age-se... ) - speaking as someone who live and work with elderly and/or compromised people, the long asymptomatic period is worrying enough on its own, the thought that there are people who are showing symptom but are still walking around going to work / movies / etc is scary.

Nobody is acting on “media scare”, as you and Fox News are calling it. It’s called science, and it’s driven by facts, based on data from sources such as the WHO. The information given explains the risks and precautions that should be considered. You don’t have to believe but please don’t spread misinformation.

Perhaps you should go read about what's actually happening in Italy?

For example:

https://threader.app/thread/1237142891077697538

https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1236933818654896129.html

It's not about me, I'll probably survive. It's about all other people. No matter if it's 1% or 4%, I hate to see people go.

Bzzt! It pegs critical care facilities if not contained and then a lot of people die.

And a lot is approximately what number? (Including secondaries sure to lack of care including other matters.)

It might sound callous, but likely not enough to cause even a momentary pause... Because worst case here seems to be a few millions.

You seem to lack empathy.

God this post is so full of bullshit. I expect better from HN.

but then I just discovered my co-worker is antivaxx. the world seems bent on disappointing me lately.

I've seen some QAnon believers on here a few months ago so all bets are off.