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Comment by forkexec | Hacker News Reader

Without quarantines, COVID-19 will be 280 million infected and 6 million deaths in the US alone.

I don't know why you're being downvoted. Anyone disagreeing with your figure should post a refutation.

I'm shocked there are so many people treating covid-19 as if it's just the flu. Our medical system is going to be strained to the breaking point. It's a big fucking deal.

There's a dog park with booze just outside my window, and it's packed to the brim with hipsters day after day. None of them care. The bars are overflowing with the St. Patrick's Day crowd.

Insane.

Why are so many people nonchalant? Can't they imagine how this situation plays out?

As someone that is trying to wade through all the misinformation and hysteria, these kinds of comments that throw out numbers with zero sources and zero commentary are useless at best. If you're going to post statistical information (e.g. the virus has a 2% fatality rate) then link to the organization or study which said so.

There's no statistical information in the comment you're replying to...

The comment I'm replying to is a response to the one above it and assumes a certain fatality rate, which is presented with no sources.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transitive_relation

Agreed! Thanks to Twitter I caught the severity of this "early" and about two weeks ago had my WTF moment. Felt like I was in the middle of an eartquake for a good hour. A switch flipped. For business and personal life I knew that I had to change up just about everything in order to address and ride through this as best as possible.

Here is something I posted a week ago about the social landscape that still holds true unfortunately:

Twitter: oh shit

Instagram: what virus

Facebook: you’re overreacting

In person: toilet paper!!!!

1) Why are you assuming it will be 280 Million and not stop at around 59 Million like before?

2) Why choose a number like 6% when it's currently at 3.8%?

3) Why are we experiencing so much more panic over this virus?

Not the commenter you're asking, but re: 2, 6/280 = 2.1% for the assumed mortality rate

The death toll is going to rise without proper care (the reason was given). I'd more modest like 35% of population is likely to get it.

> 3) Why are we experiencing so much more panic over this virus?

Italy's CFR is over 7%. They've implemented triage in Lombardy where they won't even consider someone over the age of 65, because they're out of beds and ventilators and want to ensure patients with the best chances for survival make it.

Amongst those with symptoms, this virus has an 80% hospitalization rate.

This virus is a test, and we're going to be found severely unprepared.

Give me a moment and I'll go dig up my citations.

Edit: I was wrong about the hospitalization rate. It appears to be 20% [1]

One source cites a CFR of 5% in Italy as of two days ago. [2]

[1] https://www.nbcnews.com/health/health-news/people-have-been-...

[2] https://www.livescience.com/why-italy-coronavirus-deaths-so-...

The CFR is much larger than the IFR in places like Italy that lack testing capacity. The IFR is what's relevant when estimating number of deaths if the virus were to spread to the ~whole population.

80% of symptomatic cases needing hospitalization seems very unlikely. That sounds like a biased testing sample that’s not even testing anyone that isn’t extremely sick. South Korean data seems vastly more comprehensive. Most data I’ve seen puts the upper bound on hospitalization rate at 20% which is still insanely high given how high the R0 is.

Avg age of tests in S. Korea are around 25, avg age in Italy around 65. That makes ALL the difference.

I thought it was a 20% hospitalisation rate?

I think you're right. I can't find the article I thought I had read.

Or perhaps the 80% figure was patients within a certain age range.

Do you have source for people over 65 being rejected?

I read that there is some triage but this seems a lot more extreme than I imagined.

1. The R0 of the disease sets the percentage at which herd immunity sets in and the virus stops spreading. The flu has a much lower R0 than the coronavirus.

3. Because it's much worse than the 2009 flu on almost every metric. If we treat them the same, there will be two orders of magnitude more deaths.

> 2) Why choose a number like 6% when it's currently at 3.8%?

GP appears to be using 2% mortality rate

One big difference being that this is not flu. There is no reason to assume it will behave like flu. Flu is contagious 2 days before symptoms, comparatively limiting it spread to corona which is contagious 5-14 days.

Corona has higher mortality rate in most age groups, including in young people. People who do need ICU stay there for weeks. Unknown number of people have reduced lung capacity after for long.

I've heard 40-70%, it's much more contagious 2x more than the flu or h1n1. So 50% puts it more at 150 millions * .035 = 5.25 million baseline.

Now if we run out of hospital beds and we have to pick/choose who lives/dies including car wrecks, and other emergencies the deaths could double or triple.

H1N1 had an R0 between 1.4 and 1.6 [1]. Let's assume it was 1.6.

Let's assume that the current coronavirus has an R0 of just 2 (estimates vary, most higher than this). Perhaps it is less, but for the sake of argument lets say it's 2.

1.6^10 = ~110

2^10 = 1024 (so ~9x higher)

That's with just 10 steps of transmission. So assuming the R0 of 2 is correct this will spread much faster.

Now consider that people do not seem to show symptoms until at least 5 days after they've been exposed (by some estimates, even longer, like 9+ days). Assuming they are contagious at least part of that time, they are unknowingly spreading this.

As others have mentioned add into it the fact that people who have been exposed to various flu viruses can have some immunity to new ones.

Ignoring all that, just look what's actually happening on the ground in Italy and China.

[1] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19545404/

I just felt that we went through something similar in the past and was hopeful that we should be in a better place to handle this new incident? If not where you think we failed and what could we be doing for the next time?

https://apnews.com/ce014d94b64e98b7203b873e56f80e9a

Look at what Taiwan did. They have fewer than 100 cases, despite close contact to China.

Or you could look at Cambodia. A handful of cases despite very close contact with China (and no travel ban affecting China, whereas Taiwan has one). Comparing cases between countries is completely meaningless, because every country has its own testing regime.

You seem to imply that Taiwan is not testing people. That is not true.

You seem to imply that Cambodia is not testing people. I don't think either of us know for sure one way or another.

Case numbers (and thus CFR as well) aren't comparable between countries, period. It's not as simple as "testing people" or "not testing people", each country has a different regime. Most countries won't test random asymptomatic people without a reason to do so. Heck, many countries won't even test symptomatic people unless there is a known link to a case.

I know for sure that Taiwan had an extremely early and extremely thorough response. They started tracking people who traveled to Wuhan by the end of December, when there were hardly any cases there. I have doubts that Cambodia has the systems in place to act similarly, but I'd be happy to hear otherwise.

Oh, I absolutely have doubts as well. But I don't believe any of this affects my point, which is that since the testing regime is different in each country, comparing the number of cases between countries is deeply problematic.

How is this even remotely similar? H1N1 killed less people in Italy in a year than coronavirus killed in a single day.

How did you arrive at 6 million?

That's 2% of 280 million, which is the conservative number for the COVID-19 deathrate

Sources?

There is virtually no chance that 85% of the population will get covid-19

It is pretty much in line with worst case scenarios in many European countries.

How's that?

What? That is the worst case that governments are planning for / trying to avoid.

Where did you get that 85% number. Most radical I saw so far was 70%

uk speculates at 80%. I've read 85% (for another country) but I don't have time to dig it up.

https://youtu.be/VNqfElehhKc?t=1765 29:25

Obviously very uncertain numbers no matter who you ask.

2% is not a conservative number. It's expected to come in at 0.1%-0.5%. That's bad enough.

I did not seen 0.1%-0.5% estimate in any official claim. They were all 2% or above.

Chief medical adviser of the UK govt claims 0.6%.

2% or above is only reached in populations that are tested sparsely. In countries that test more like South Korea and Germany* the death rate is much lower, because more infection cases are known. Italy's death rate is currently so high because only severe cases have been tested, because of limited test availability. The death rate will trend lower when more tests are performed. Germany currently has ~6000 infected and 13 death.

* even in Germany you are (at least till very recently) only tested if you show symptoms AND have been in contact with an infected person or have been to a heavily hit region).

What data supports 0.1% - 0.5%?

Numbers from Switzerland, South Korea, Germany... countries that test more people tend to have lower numbers because not only the severe cases are found.

Please provide a link with data

No, it's not the conservative number. The UK chief medical adviser estimates it at 0.6%, which is much easier to support with the available data (case fatality rate and an estimate of what proportion of infections are being detected as cases) than 2%.

I'm mostly hopeful because people are taking COVID much more seriously than the flu.

I couldn't get my parents to get a flu vaccine, but now they are doing self quarantine and taking it.seriously.

As long as people are scared enough, they are relatively safe compared to other diseases.

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