Neither of these is a final or accurate number: many of the current cases will progress to death, and many who have been (or are) infected have not been tested (e.g. because they were asymptomatic or had only minor symptoms).
Here’s a more careful attempt to determine the numbers for Wuhan (published today) which results in numbers substantially lower (though still scary) than those suggested by the WHO previously https://www.nature.com/articles/s41591-020-0822-7
Source: https://www.wsj.com/articles/italys-virus-death-toll-on-the-...
For the record, on the Diamond Princess (with everybody tested) the number of asymptomatic case was 60% with more than 1% death rate with Japanese healthcare (not overloaded). You can't generalize on these figures either for many reasons but thats's still a strong warning.
# Italian deaths / Italian cases = percentage dead [1]
2_978 / 35_713 = 0.0833870019
# USA population * percentage dead = USA death scenario [2]
329_414_824 * 0.0833870019 = 27_468_914
It's prob not gonna get that bad, but Italy didn't see a scenario where people would die at a rate over 8%. So there's a scenario. Don't panic, but also don't dismiss scenarios you'd rather not believe. Americans who get laid off lose access to cheap healthcare, and many as already don't have it. Lack of healthcare doesn't sound like a great a situation.
[1] Source: Coronavirus disease (COVID-2019) situation reports # 59 for March 19
No need to make already awful numbers into lies by multiplying by 7.
Stats from Italy are going to be heavily skewed towards fatalities for a number of reasons that have been documented by epidemiologists.
And regardless, it would be very, very bad. If it's only 5M people instead of 15M, that's still catastrophic. Also while the hospitals are completely overwhelmed with COVID-19, people will die of other things that would normally be survivable.
And finally, we have an alternative: keep employing distancing and, where necessary, lockdown measures while scaling up testing. These lockdowns will get the cases under control, but they would flare back up as soon as they're ended. However, with the expanded testing, we can instead perform sufficient testing across the entire population to catch outbreaks before they start. With sufficient testing, things can go back to normal while remaining confident that we're not spreading the virus undetected and seeding a new outbreak. It needs to be orders of magnitude more than we have now, but it's entirely possible.
Wealthy people have power.
It takes time to accrue wealth, most wealthy people are old.
Coronavirus kills 10% of 80+, and 5% of all 65+.
Old people vote.
If the hospital systems are overwhelmed because we don't flatten the curve, those percentages likely double or triple.
Look at how much we've learned about treating this virus in the 3-ish months we've been paying it the attention it deserves. If we slow it for another month, maybe these percentages could be cut in half.
You should find the actuarial tables and life expectancies for an 80 year old. It ain’t sunshine and rainbows.
Every year nearly 3 million people die in the US already.
https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/deaths.htm
Are you saying we experience the worst catastrophe year in and year out?
The hyperbole and exaggerated fearmongering over coronavirus is something to keep an eye out for. Also, if everyone gets infected, it likely means that the virus is far less deadly than you assume and the death rate is far lower than 1%. Think about it rather than cherrypicking data to push an agenda.