News for hackers. Stuff that matters.

A comment on Past Time to Tell the Public:It Will Probably Go Pandemic, We Should Prepare Now. Parent comment

Re:Past Time to Tell the Public:It Will Probably Go Pandemic... by jacquesm on Sunday February 23, 2020 @12:29PM (#22398130)
Right. But COVID-19 isn't influenza related so all these flu comparisons are moot as far as I'm concerned. The mortality appears for now - with all the figures that I've seen - to be much higher.

If this thing keeps going like it has for the last couple of weeks then it will make the last H1N1 pandemic look like a walk in the park. The final count on that was 100's of thousands dead in 199 different countries. And it didn't take off nearly as fast as this.

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Past Time to Tell the Public:It Will Probably Go Pandemic... by DanBC on Sunday February 23, 2020 @01:25PM (#22398528)
But new pathogens always look much worse than they are because we haven't got testing sorted out yet. We test the very serious cases, we don't test the mild cases.
[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Past Time to Tell the Public:It Will Probably Go Pandemic... by jacquesm on Sunday February 23, 2020 @01:42PM (#22398646)
Yes, that's a good point. Especially valid because there is a very real limit on the number of test kits available. That's also a risk in case of asymptomatic spreading.
[ Parent | on HN ]