Actually it is worse than Spanish flu. Mortality rate for the Spanish flu is estimated at 2-3% according to the WHO. COVID-19 currently stands at 3.4-3.6%.

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-...

It's complicated. First of all countries with a relatively young population like South Korea are going to be hit less hard overall than countries with relatively old populations like Italy.

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.

I've not heard any health officials suggest that age is a factor in South Korea's response to the virus. They're only about 3 years younger than Italians [1] -- but have 4x as many hospital beds per capita [2].

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

It's less about the median age than the numbers in the categories at highest risk. If you compare the population pyramids of the two Italy has many more people over 65. Number of hospital beds per capita is also a big deal.

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

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

> COVID-19 currently stands at 3.4-3.6%.

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

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

0.6%

There's been consistent - IMO unprofessional - confusion between Case Fatality Ratio and Population Mortality.

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 diagnosis of the Spanish flu would also not have been complete. Actually, it was almost certainly worse; I don't believe they then had much of a test beyond "do they have the classic symptoms".

Even if the mortality rates are similar, it looks probable that fewer people will end up being infected by this virus before we get a handle on it. Also don't forget the Spanish flu was concurrent with WW1. Holy double whammy.

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

>Our grandparents lived through worse

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

I'll take COVID-19 over Polio.

Which is unfortunate for many of the boomers - they get both!

That's survivorship bias, though. Those of us whose grandparents didn't live through it were never born and aren't here to voice their opinion.

The mortality rates suggest that many of those who succumbed to the Spanish flu would have died after having children.

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

I mean, being better then WWII is not much of consolation ...

Wars tend to give economic growth and technological advancement as consolation prizes, though. I don't see that happening here. I hope we can get at least an improved public health system out of it, but I fear we won't get even that.

While WWII gave economic advantage to united states, places where it happened were destroyed and in loss. Wars are economic advantage also if you get to get colony you can exploit - but colony looses a lot.

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.

Worth noting that the UK pretty much got the NHS because of WW2.

Given how simple[1] coronavirus would be to solve if people took it seriously and opted to socially distance as much as possible, it's rather sad that we're bounding how terrible it will be by the some of worst catastrophes ever to be suffered by humanity rather than by something like a recession.

[1] simple, but not necessarily painless

Deprive the fire of it's fuel and it goes out. In this case the fuel is people and the virus is the fire. If nearly everyone isolated themselves in their homes for a 2 or 3 weeks the virus would run out of people to infect. Essentially what they had to do in Wuhan. We aren't taking it seriously enough in the West to do this.

The problem is, though, that we live in a very connected world. If absolutely everyone, worldwide, isolated themselves, then yes, the virus would die out. But if everyone does so except Iran, say, or Oklahoma, then Iran or Oklahoma reinfect the world and everyone has to do it again.

Yes, and maybe we have to ban travel from Iran(!) or Oklahoma until they cooperate.

Oklahoma would be very hard. Iran would be easier for us... but not for Iraq. You probably couldn't prohibit travel from Iraq into Syria. And so it goes...

Recessions kill people, too. Suicide rates go up, healthcare suffers, poverty worsens.

An enormous outbreak seems likely to cause a recession. The economy is people. People get sick and die, the economy suffers.

It's almost as if we're incapable of creating a planetary economy that can handle shocks with robustness and resilience.

People often harp on this point, but plagues travelled the globe long before globalization. They just moved a bit slower from area to area. But they were quite devastating in less connected ages.

Yes, this is all true.

Sure, it isn't every bad thing your grandparents survived, but I think it might turn out to be worse than Spanish Flu.