Fortunately we know a lot more about viruses today than we did in 1918. The virus has already been mapped genetically, and many labs around the world are hard at work on an anti-viral treatment. We shouldn't get complacent of course, but it's likely that this thing can be contained and treated eventually.

I read today about a device[1] from Israel that helps the lungs quickly clear phlegm, thus reducing the coughing behavior that spreads the disease. The Chinese are starting to manufacture and deploy it, so hopefully it will cut back on the spread at least a bit.

1. https://www.jpost.com/HEALTH-SCIENCE/New-Israeli-invention-u...

in vitro: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41422-020-0282-0

practice: https://www.jstage.jst.go.jp/article/bst/advpub/0/advpub_202...

>Chloroquine Phosphate, which has been used for more than 70 years, has been tested in 135 cases in Beijing and southern China's Guangdong Province. Among them, 130 patients have light and common symptoms, and five are severe patients.

>None of the patients with light and common symptoms have developed severe symptoms. Four severe patients have been discharged from hospital, and one has seen severe symptoms mitigated to normal, Xu said. http://www.china.org.cn/china/2020-02/22/content_75732846.ht...

Which seems quite promising. Also it could be used prophylactically.

e.g. https://www.jpost.com/HEALTH-SCIENCE/New-Israeli-invention-u...

well, for saying that.

That 30 million dead, and probably another 300 million hospitalized and maybe 50 million that need icu care.

Should probably go without saying that we don’t have the ICU beds to handle that in the western world, let alone in developing countries.

We also haven’t had anything like the Spanish flu in the US since we’ve had the modern health insurance system. Is blue cross going to have the resources to pay for all those extra hospital visits? What about all the long term side effects from the millions of people that had acute respiratory failure and survived.

edit:

Also something else to consider -- what if this goes epidemic in the US during the elections this year? They'll have to cancel rallies, campaign events, maybe even the party conventions.

Every cloud has a silver lining :)

>Is blue cross going to have the resources to pay for all those extra hospital visits?

If the government ends up bailing them out this could be a step towards single payer health care in the US.

Median ages:

https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/resources/the-world...

Countries in the West over 40 at the median:

Germany, Italy, Greece, Slovenia, Portugal, Austria, Lithuania, Latvia, Croatia, Spain, Bulgaria, Estonia, Hungary, Serbia, Bosnia, Czech, Finland, Netherlands, Switzerland, Romania, Denmark, Poland, Canada, Slovakia, France, Belgium, Ukraine, Sweden, Belarus, UK, Russia

Germany has half its 83 million population over 48 years of age. Italy is the 5th oldest country at the median. Covid will hit very hard against older populations.

https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/coronavirus-age-se...

edit: probably also rationing: Canned goods are starting to look a bit bare at our local supermarket in Florence, about 200km from Italy's COVID19 cases. https://twitter.com/JacekWork/status/1231900845802954757

edit-2: Residents in Milan, Italy have raided the grocery stores as panic about COVID19 and city lockdowns sets in. https://twitter.com/RuralCdn/status/1231969752890957824

Interesting, this is always my argument against these fatality ratio estimates, can you explain how the IFR can take undetected mild cases into account? Does it just assume at random how many of those cases exist?

That’s assuming no containment effort, like with seasonal flu. Of course, it’s gonna happen if health authorities take the same defeatist attitude as you and do nothing.

I'm a bit confused. Isn't expecting it to be devastating the very attitude needed for authorities to justify engaging in the containment methods needed to reduce the harm caused?

how long can they get away with locking people up in their homes? There will be tipping point when those who are supposed to deliver the first-response and do the policing will also become a vector for spreading the disease. Things will escalate quickly no matter if the attitude is "defeatist" or optimistic.

How much hotter do you think it would have to get to make that virus die out?

It's similar for Malaysia and Thailand since they're still in the tropics, except those countries are less dense.

It very clearly is and it's out of the box, they can't stop it now. The US should be shutting down all travel into and out of the country, full quarantine from the rest of the world. We'd have a chance at stopping it from doing to the US what it has done to China, if we acted immediately, before it's across Europe and more of Asia and then imported in stealth mode by travelers from those regions that are unaware they're infected.

Back in reality, the US economy will look like China's frozen economy, within a month or two, unless Covid is stopped soon. More likely, it's going to spread from Italy across Europe, and continue to spread across Asia. From those hyper economic zones, the US will be guaranteed to import it from multiple sources (no single country to shut down travel with).

China went full totalitarian to an extreme, and couldn't stop it. Covid froze the second largest economy and did it in the span of a month. What chance does the rest of the world stand at stopping it? None.

Bill Gates is worried about it spreading across Africa (and said in an interview a few weeks ago, when asked about his plans for the year: "well, I plan to travel a lot less this year" - yeah). He's obviously properly worried. It will kill a large number of people in poorer economic regions that will see their healthcare resources overwhelmed. The US is nowhere near prepared for what's likely about to hit.

If we had a government that wasn't starved, it might also be preparing sufficient resources for if/when the virus does reach epidemic proportions here.

Also, Americans have been trained to avoid the medical system and tough it out for cost-saving reasons, that training is going to be counterproductive here.

As you said:

> It very clearly is and it's out of the box

This doesn't follow. It doesn't matter how large an economy is affected. The primary factor is contact between infected and healthy people. Areas with less population density might have a good shot at keeping infections down, like a lot of areas in Europe.

You misspelled America. Europe has a pretty high population density in comparison.