This coronavirus is unlike anything in our lifetime

[Demovictory9]

In the meantime, not one public health expert I trust — not one — has said this flu comparison is valid or that we’re overdoing it. Every single one, from former FDA Commissioner Scott Gottlieb to Harvard professor Ashish Jha, has said we’re not doing enough, that this is far more serious than it is being taken.

Here’s why that is:

This is far deadlier than the flu.

The flu kills less than 1% of infected people who are over age 65. By comparison, in China, COVID-19 killed 8% of those infected who were 70-79 and almost 15% of those infected who were age 80 or older. That’s a staggering difference.

Even for younger people, the difference was striking. Flu killed .02% of infected patients age 18-49. It’s 10 times that for COVID-19.

In other countries, such as South Korea, the death rate has been far lower.

But if 1 in 12 people age 70-79 who get the virus and 1 in 7 people age 80 or older who get the virus die, and the virus spreads to 20%, 40% or 70% of the population, we’re talking massive death tolls, the likes of which we have never seen before in our lives.

https://www.rawstory.com/2020/03/this-coronavirus-is-unlike-anything-in-our-lifetime-and-comparing-it-to-the-flu-is-dangerously-inaccurate/

[Phoenix61]

1. We have become so accustomed to modern

medicine being able to fix everything. The idea of a pandemic that kills millions is just incompressible. Look how long it took for people to realize HIV wasn’t a “gay” disease. That people aren’t able to wrap their heads around this isn’t surprising.

[Walleye]

2. I was just saying that. Not just the virus, but the global economic disaster it's causing.

[greenjar_01]

3. An epidemiologist, probably to within several hundred, can tell you how many people will die

of flu in 2021, 2022, and 2023.

Folks who don't think in terms of systems or population dynamics are simply not getting it. The problem is the uncertainty about how this disease will affect our medical and economic systems. The flu is a more or less predictable public health problem now. We could probably reduce the death rate with more uptake of public health messaging, and a better (more affordable) health care system for earlier intervention in severe cases. Yes, fine. Public health professionals have been working on that for years,. but a predictable number will still die of flu each year.

Nobody can really predict how many people will die of CORVID-19 this year, or next, or next. That's the problem.

[KentuckyWoman]

4. I was alive for polio.

I was little, but I was here.

I have a remembrance of the hysteria - and everything was already in short supply - even out in small farm east Kentucky country.