> 3) Why are we experiencing so much more panic over this virus?

Italy's CFR is over 7%. They've implemented triage in Lombardy where they won't even consider someone over the age of 65, because they're out of beds and ventilators and want to ensure patients with the best chances for survival make it.

Amongst those with symptoms, this virus has an 80% hospitalization rate.

This virus is a test, and we're going to be found severely unprepared.

Give me a moment and I'll go dig up my citations.

Edit: I was wrong about the hospitalization rate. It appears to be 20% [1]

One source cites a CFR of 5% in Italy as of two days ago. [2]

[1] https://www.nbcnews.com/health/health-news/people-have-been-...

[2] https://www.livescience.com/why-italy-coronavirus-deaths-so-...

The CFR is much larger than the IFR in places like Italy that lack testing capacity. The IFR is what's relevant when estimating number of deaths if the virus were to spread to the ~whole population.

80% of symptomatic cases needing hospitalization seems very unlikely. That sounds like a biased testing sample that’s not even testing anyone that isn’t extremely sick. South Korean data seems vastly more comprehensive. Most data I’ve seen puts the upper bound on hospitalization rate at 20% which is still insanely high given how high the R0 is.

Avg age of tests in S. Korea are around 25, avg age in Italy around 65. That makes ALL the difference.

Do you have source for people over 65 being rejected?

I read that there is some triage but this seems a lot more extreme than I imagined.

I thought it was a 20% hospitalisation rate?

I think you're right. I can't find the article I thought I had read.

Or perhaps the 80% figure was patients within a certain age range.

H1N1 had an R0 between 1.4 and 1.6 [1]. Let's assume it was 1.6.

Let's assume that the current coronavirus has an R0 of just 2 (estimates vary, most higher than this). Perhaps it is less, but for the sake of argument lets say it's 2.

1.6^10 = ~110

2^10 = 1024 (so ~9x higher)

That's with just 10 steps of transmission. So assuming the R0 of 2 is correct this will spread much faster.

Now consider that people do not seem to show symptoms until at least 5 days after they've been exposed (by some estimates, even longer, like 9+ days). Assuming they are contagious at least part of that time, they are unknowingly spreading this.

As others have mentioned add into it the fact that people who have been exposed to various flu viruses can have some immunity to new ones.

Ignoring all that, just look what's actually happening on the ground in Italy and China.

[1] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19545404/

I've heard 40-70%, it's much more contagious 2x more than the flu or h1n1. So 50% puts it more at 150 millions * .035 = 5.25 million baseline.

Now if we run out of hospital beds and we have to pick/choose who lives/dies including car wrecks, and other emergencies the deaths could double or triple.

Not the commenter you're asking, but re: 2, 6/280 = 2.1% for the assumed mortality rate

One big difference being that this is not flu. There is no reason to assume it will behave like flu. Flu is contagious 2 days before symptoms, comparatively limiting it spread to corona which is contagious 5-14 days.

Corona has higher mortality rate in most age groups, including in young people. People who do need ICU stay there for weeks. Unknown number of people have reduced lung capacity after for long.

1. The R0 of the disease sets the percentage at which herd immunity sets in and the virus stops spreading. The flu has a much lower R0 than the coronavirus.

3. Because it's much worse than the 2009 flu on almost every metric. If we treat them the same, there will be two orders of magnitude more deaths.

The death toll is going to rise without proper care (the reason was given). I'd more modest like 35% of population is likely to get it.

> 2) Why choose a number like 6% when it's currently at 3.8%?

GP appears to be using 2% mortality rate