I had a 'Pépin' in my family (French given name), which apparently is what Pepys is based on.

Dunno if this is known outside the UK

"Keeping Up Appearances was a great success in the UK, and also captured large audiences in the US, Canada, Australia, Denmark, Finland, Sweden, Ireland, Belgium, and the Netherlands. By February 2016, it had been sold nearly 1,000 times to overseas broadcasters, making it BBC Worldwide's most exported television programme."

https://www.amazon.com/Journal-Plague-Year-Observations-Rema...

1666: Great Fire of London

It must have seemed like the world was ending.

We do have the advantage maybe that the world today is better prepared at handling this kind of events, but we're only just 50 days in, the Spanish flu ended up lasting 2 years.

Source Spanish flu: https://apps.who.int/iris/bitstream/handle/10665/44123/97892... Source COVID-19: https://www.who.int/dg/speeches/detail/who-director-general-...

Second, there's going to be a big difference in mortality depending on how the medical system is holding up. In South Korea they got it contained, everybody who needed it got an ICU, and the case fatality rate is less than 1%. In Wuhan they were almost overwhelmed but built some extra hospitals then the they'd been in lockdown longer than the incubation period and they ended up with a bit over a 3% case fatality ratio. In Italy right now the worst hit hospitals are very overwhelmed and performing desperate triage with many infected medical workers and they've got a case fatality ratio over 8%.

Of course, case fatality ratio only covers diagnosed cases. If people with a light fever stay home and don't get tested they won't show up in the denominator and the case fatality ratio will be an exaggeration of the actual fatality ratio. How much of the difference between South Korea and Italy right now is due to which of those factors? I honestly don't know but I am worried. I think mortality rates similar to the Spanish flu could certainly occur if we respond badly enough.

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_median_ag... [2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_OECD_countries_by_hosp...

https://www.populationpyramid.net/republic-of-korea/2019/

https://www.populationpyramid.net/italy/2019/

Not according to other studies that covered people with no obvious symptoms.

https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/health-environment/article/30...

0.6%

The >1% numbers are all CFRs, calculated from diagnosed cases. They don't account for people with no symptoms, or those who aren't tested.

It's very hard to estimate unmodified population mortality, because the real numbers are lowered by quarantine measures and health care.

But real population mortality seems set to be well under 1%, with the bulk of deaths among the over the 60s, heavily skewed to the over 80s.

That's hardly trivial, but it's a long way off the 240 million who would die if the population mortality really were around 3%.

Note that I'm not trying to minimize the current situation. However comparing existing situations to worse ones is a stoic coping strategy.

Holy sampling bias, Batman! Our ancestors survived the K-T extinction event too.

http://www.influenzavirusnet.com/1918-flu-pandemic/mortality...

Syria gained no growth. Places that got destabilized by war and became great playground for local warlords got no growth.

Wars are pretty much catastrophy for most involved.

[1] simple, but not necessarily painless

It is the product of these factors which is causing the "freaking out" as you call it.

If you look at just first world nations[0], you're talking a total population of 1.04 billion people. 60% of that is 630 million people. 3% of that 60% is 18 million people that could die just in the first world nations.

And that's rounding everything down.

0: https://worldpopulationreview.com/countries/first-world-coun...

In reality, you have China. They are nowhere near these numbers. In Germany trade show get cancelled, events get cancelled, soccer games take place without spectators, schools close. Quarantine measures will certainly be put in place as well when needed. All this helps to keep infections down and slow the spreading. It worked in China after all.

I am no expert on diseaes, but I did my fair amount of number crunching. And that tell me that just taking the current average of deaths and infections, currently somewhere around 3.4%, extrapolate the number of infections worldwide and multiply the two doesn't fly. At the very least you have to brake down the world population by age groups based on the same groups we have specific mortality rates for. doing so already gives you a better picture and a more realistic number. Nobody who comes up with expected fatalities seems to bother to do so.

Obviously, that leaves the whole impact of counter-measures out of the equation. it doesn't account for time nor for any regionl clusters of people. Neither does it account for any local shortages due to an overwhelmed medical system for certain periods in certain regions. Or for any steps taken to counter these effects. To properly do so requires a full scale modelling of this thing. unfortunately the numbers are changing quite fast, so building these models is quite ifficult i suspect.

You would also have to account for margins of error and the fact that testing is a major influence in any parameter of this model. And testing varies highly between countries.

TLDR: The numbers a re a mess, calculation and modelling is difficult and everything is changing daily. Good luck with coming up with any reliable predictions.

I would love to see numbers for testing so. Especially how many tests have been conducted by region, how many where positive and how many negative. Ideally over time.

My current theory is that people are just scared. The numbers seem scary (no baseline as things like the flu are not nearly as thoroughly reported by the press) and every new infection and fatality is extensovely covered, whle the bigger picture isn't. Then this whole thing is just one big unknown, and humans are programmed to fear the unknown. Then you have confirmation bias, people tend to seek information confirming their opinions. Social media is designed to reinforce this bias, media is ware of that an needs clicks.This further reinforces this effect.

Also people want confirmation, so they actally seek out these filter bubbles. Humans in general also tend to be bad at risk management and evaluation. So, psychlogically I suspect it is just fear, combined with a desire for confirmation. Because, as crazy it is in my eyes, sharing your fears makes it easier for you to bear. Others not being affraid and giving you pushback on that is the last thing these people want or need.

I have still no idea how tackle that, spreading fear is still just plain wrong. Pushback and facts don't seem to work, so no idea what would.

But please compare/contrast the current state of play:

1. https://news.sky.com/story/coronavirus-they-call-it-the-apoc...

2. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/av/world-us-canada-51955362/us-st...

Death Rate by age 80+ Between 21.9 and 14.8%

70-79 8%

60-69 3.6%

Death rate for those with comorbidities varies from 13.2-10.5% for cardiovascular disease to 7.6-5.6% for cancer.

People you know are going to die. If your parents are over 60 and otherwise healthy there’s a good chance they’ll die. If they are any way ill it’s even more likely.

https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/cgi-bin/resolve?id=doi%3A1...

Any children that are in utero while their mother is infected are likely to have

> lower educational attainment, increased rates of physical disability, lower income, lower socioeconomic status, and higher transfer payments compared with other birth cohorts

In Long Island, NY 6 people were recently confirmed infected. All but one is hospitalized but the problem is 2 are in their 20s, 2 are in their 30s, 1 is in their 40s and 1 is in their 80s. The only one not hospitalized is an early 20s woman[0].

The reports don't explicitly say if they had prior health conditions or not but most reporting up until now always included if the patient had prior health conditions.

In any case, this doesn't seem to be limited to the old and sickly. Italian doctors are also saying they are seeing a large influx of younger healthy people needing critical care. This is folks having their lungs punctured and needing mechanical breathing machines to avoid drowning to death from liquid build up in their lungs.

That is probably why people are freaking out.

[0]: https://riverheadlocal.com/2020/03/11/two-new-coronavirus-ca...

With the emphasis on known. More likely it's 10X or 20X that right now because there's been very little testing in the US.

https://www.macrovoices.com/guest-content/list-guest-publica...