It's not even a matter of being equipped to handle it imo; all signs also point to COVID19 not being as serious as initially thought and far more mild than expected.

Administrating the test for it is both expensive, and time consuming, so the gross number of known infections is likely to be substantially underreported because of selection bias (why run expensive RNA analysis on a blood sample if the person is having mild cold symptoms?). There are probably a bunch of other confounding factors, such as most people getting it are probably asymptomatic or just think they have a typical cold/flu. It also appears to be non-lethal to children, as opposed to seasonal influenza.

In simple gross numbers, more people die in car accidents every day than the current worldwide totality for this virus. Comparing against US CDC stats, it isn't even remotely close to statistical estimates for flu deaths so far this year in the US alone(~16k).

My suspicion is if you concede that gross numbers of COVID19 infections are substantially underreported, the death rates fall into line with typical flu, maybe marginally worse.

The reasonable response to this is what people should already be doing for influenza: practice good hygiene, stay home if you're sick, take caution when interacting with at risk populations to minimize their exposure, etc.

What makes it different is that it is new. This could have made it avoidable in comparison to other diseases that are common. Surely it is worth trying to eradicate diseases before they get established? If we could irradicate flu we would.

I'm not sure what I've said that would contradict anything you've suggested. I agree with your question, obviously we should do everything reasonable to contain and curtail a lethal disease. The best way to do that is to address it in a sober, realistic manner and drive intervention and response on evidence - not the conjecture of journalists who demonstrate little to no understanding of the situation and disseminate unfounded paranoia.

I think your comment is doing the opposite. It is using conjecture and false comparisons to downplay the seriousness. And using those false comparisons as a heuristic for justifying a continuation of common practice. You may well be right. But you are not providing any evidence to justify that.

Could you detail what comparisons you think are unfair?

As for sources, if you look in the thread I respond citing WHO, NEJM, KCDC, etc as evidence for my assertions/assumptions.

People who hold the above opinion, can you explain what makes you confident in your position, given that it’s in opposition to essentially the entire worldwide public health community?

Can you cite some of the worldwide public health community that disagrees with the assertions? All the alarmism I've seen is coming from a media, typically with wildly outdated or incorrect statistics.

WHO's clickbait ten tips for conoravirus include statements such as "Most people will have mild disease and get better without needing any special care." [1]

If you read the stuff they've been publishing, you'll get quotes such as "Most people infected with COVID-19 virus have mild disease and recover. Approximately 80% of laboratory confirmed patients have had mild to moderate disease, which includes non-pneumonia and pneumonia cases", and "Recognize that COVID-19 is a new and concerning disease, but that outbreaks can managed with the right response and that the vast majority of infected people will recover;" [2]

They also discuss how we're already seeing the death ratio dropping substantially, and treatment is being improved: "In China, the overall CFR was higher in the early stages of the outbreak (17.3% for cases with symptom onset from 1-10 January) and has reduced over time to 0.7% for patients with symptom onset after 1 February (Figure 4). The Joint Mission noted that the standard of care has evolved over the course of the outbreak." [2]

CDC publications and announcements follow similar sentiments.

Edit: adding NEJM quote that supports my assumption about sampling issues: "We found a lower case fatality rate (1.4%) than the rate that was recently reportedly, probably because of the difference in sample sizes and case inclusion criteria. Our findings were more similar to the national official statistics, which showed a rate of death of 3.2% among 51,857 cases of Covid-19 as of February 16, 2020. Since patients who were mildly ill and who did not seek medical attention were not included in our study, the case fatality rate in a real-world scenario might be even lower. Early isolation, early diagnosis, and early management might have collectively contributed to the reduction in mortality in Guangdong." [3]

[1] https://www.who.int/dg/speeches/detail/who-diretor-general-s...

[2] https://www.who.int/docs/default-source/coronaviruse/who-chi...

[3] https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa2002032

So, a 20% chance of a severe case (which means hospitalization as far as I know) is no big deal?

Also am I reading that correctly that they are including pneumonia in the "mild or moderate" category?

"Severe case" is clinically defined in the source material on page 12 if you're interested. I'm not sure o2 sat or respiratory rate is particularly meaningful to readers on here so I didn't include it.

I'm not sure where you're getting "no big deal" from, I never said or implied anything of the sort. It appears to be comparable to influenza, which is serious and warrants a serious response, but not cause for any panic. Flu already poses a serious risk to the elderly, yet we don't see widespread panic year over year.

Mild pneumonia is also known as atypical/walking pneumonia. In the source material they state that they classify mild pneumonia as a moderate infection. See figure 5. Most cases of atypical pneumonia don't require hospitalization, as the primary characteristics are just cold symptoms that don't go away in a week.

We're going to start seeing more data coming out of South Korea in the coming weeks that is likely to be far more reliable than what the CCP would show. Currently the fatality rate appears to be ~0.5% and trending downward. [1]

[1] https://www.cdc.go.kr/board/board.es?mid=a30402000000&bid=00...

I wonder. I'm less worried about the handling of the pandemics than its impact on the globalized economy. I assume it was less an issue 100 years ago, and that we are not fully equipped to deal with this.

Part of that is rapid transfer of information though - I could argue that the ability to rapidly spread fear of the disease to get people to worry and change their behaviors helps make us better at dealing with pandemics than when the news and the government would push propoganda saying there's nothing to worry about. I don't know if I would argue that or complete believe that argument since I agree with you that a lot of this is needless fear mongering and there are likely detrimental effects to that, but I don't know if it's as cut and dry?

Agreed it’s not cut & dry. We should put everything in context.

As crude as it sounds there haven’t been that many deaths. Yes this seems to have outbreaks in waves but that’s about the only scary part.

We should be alert but not anxious!

The point of my response was that fear mongering and rapid information spread might be a reason that we haven't seen that many deaths. The whole point is to minimize how many more deaths there are, and it's the potential for disruption and death that matters right now, not the existing number of deaths except as indicators of what the extent of the risk might be

In terms of vaccine development, yes. In terms of the economics of health care distribution, I'm not so certain.