Re:California governor issues statewide 'stay at home' order
by tempestn on Thursday March 19, 2020 @11:27PM
(#22634456)
Exactly. Death rate in Italy is over 5% I believe. Allowing it to spread unchecked would be an unmitigated catastrophe, and the deaths certainly wouldn't be limited to the elderly. What we need to do is massively expand testing so that the lockdowns and distancing measures can be ended without allowing the virus to go back to spreading through the community.
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Re:California governor issues statewide 'stay at home' order
by jacobolus on Thursday March 19, 2020 @11:35PM
(#22634552)
Keep in mind, the number you are talking about is known deaths / known cases.
Neither of these is a final or accurate number: many of the current cases will progress to death, and many who have been (or are) infected have not been tested (e.g. because they were asymptomatic or had only minor symptoms).
Here’s a more careful attempt to determine the numbers for Wuhan (published today) which results in numbers substantially lower (though still scary) than those suggested by the WHO previously https://www.nature.com/articles/s41591-020-0822-7
Re:California governor issues statewide 'stay at home' order
by tempestn on Thursday March 19, 2020 @11:56PM
(#22634708)
For sure, to have an accurate number you need to wait until all cases resolved AND you need to have thorough testing to know what the total number of cases were. Good to see that it may not have been quite as bad as thought in Wuhan. That said, they did enact pretty strict quarantine measures there and massively surged hospital capacity, so it's not like that number represents total healthcare collapse either. Regardless, to me it seems to great to just say it's outweighed by the costs of control measures, especially since there is another path to take.