Comment by richardknop | Hacker News Reader

Comment by richardknop | Hacker News Reader

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This is my personal opinion and I could be 100% wrong. But I think this is no worse than crazy cow disease or Zika virus or SARS.

Media, as always, cares about clicks and will publish sensational articles. In China the virus has peaked and the president of China declared victory over the virus today. We are 2-4 weeks behind China.

It is estimated the virus will peak in 2 weeks from now. So next 2 weeks get ready for catastrophic headlines. Then eventually daily new reported cases in Italy etc will start dropping and panic will be over.

I think I have contracted the Coronavirus but since I am a healthy 31 years old person I have fought it off and defeated it.

How do you "think" you have it? Wouldn't you get quarantined if you were likely to have it?

Vast majority of people who contract the virus just have mild cold or flu symptoms. Very small percentage of infected people end up going to hospitals.

> Very small percentage of infected people end up going to hospitals.

It's 10-20% according to most estimates, enough to flood every hospital system in the world. Once that happens the death toll starts creeping towards 20% as they can't treat patients and even people otherwise treatable problems can't get treated. This is the scenario that needs to be avoided.

> Vast majority of people who contract the virus just have mild cold or flu symptoms.

Mild in the medical sense, everyone not hospitalized is considered mild. In the everyday human sense this translates from nothing to extremely sick. If your friend had pneumonia you'd be concerned for them wouldn't you? Well that's a "mild" case.

What makes you think you have contracted coronavirus and not for example the common cold?

well the number of cases in China winding down because they lockdown the whole province of 60 million people and almost stopped all activities in other parts of China. Can US afford to do that for 1 month?

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