Not really, we've built a culture around pushing ourselves to work even when we are sick.

What would be more constructive than being scared is to work positively to end this culture.

Edit: to be really explicit, staying at home for several days when you feel sick and even after you think you have recovered should continue, even after the fear of the Coronavirus dies down.

Agreed that that should be a cultural change, and it'd be good for individuals, individual businesses, the economy, and society at large.

The fact that that viewpoint is representative of a broader cultural trend is genuinely terrifying, though. Even ignoring people who have to go to work in order to pay for food and housing (no legal requirement to offer paid sick leave!), there will be a very large group of people who believe it's virtuous to toughen up and go to work anyway, even if they feel like death incarnate.

> So far" is doing a bit of work, but ignoring that...

Exactly. He and his wife felt fine when they left the ship after 16 days. Meanwhile, six passengers who had symptoms earlier are dead. The author could easily have his worst days ahead of him and this article does everyone a disservice.

Scaring the fuck out of yourself is the last thing that is going to help you. We all need to do our best, and then...relax into this thing.

Surprised how long he was asymptomatic. That is concerning to me.

um mortality rate is something like 1% ... hardly high

The regular flu is 0.1%. The 1918 pandemic had a mortality rate of 2%, and killed 50 million people.

The Spanish flu infected about 500 million people and killed about 50 million according to most estimations. That's a death rate of 10%.

It should also be said that the 1% rate for COVID-19 is probably too high because a lot of cases appear to be hardly symptomatic. The cruise ship had 3 deaths up until now, all over the age of 80.

In 1918 the world population was 1.8B. If every single person got infected, and the mortality rate was 2%, then that's 36M.

Something wrong with your numbers.

From wikipedia:

> It infected 500 million people around the world,[2] or about 27% of the then world population of between 1.8 and 1.9 billion, including people on isolated Pacific islands and in the Arctic. The death toll is estimated to have been 40 million to 50 million, and possibly as high as 100 million

Ok, if it infected 27% of 1.9 billion, that’s 500M people infected.

50-100M of those die, for a fatality rate of at 10 to 20%, not the 2% referenced in OP.

You're nitpicking for no reason; they're close approximations. maybe it was 2.1% or 1.9% maybe it was 40 million or 60 -- record keeping 1918 globally may not have been exactly computer-perfect. There was a war being recovered from, the world was still poor, and medical science inexact.

The GP's point stands, I think.

It’s not 1.9% or 2.1%, the fatality rate would have to be 10% for those numbers to work.

Hypothesis: some were infected, survived, then reinfecterd and died.

That is very high, both compared to influenza and to what our health care system is able to handle.

And when the case load is higher than what the health care system is able to handle, mortality jumps to 2% or higher.

Also, caseload straining the healthcare system boosts mortality for other conditions.

5% to 8%? https://www.reddit.com/r/COVID19/comments/fb7pjm/risk_of_dea...

>>um mortality rate is something like 1% ... hardly high

Mortality is 100%...for the person that dies from it. And that 1% rate is so far, I hope we don't see what happens if 46 million people in USA get it and try going to the hospital.

The Tail at Scale