Re:U.S. Economy Shrinks at 4.8% Pace, Signaling Start of Rec...
by greedo on Wednesday April 29, 2020 @03:13PM
(#23022957)
Lots of current evidence supports the claim. COVID is clearly more contagious than the flu, and herd immunity (without a vaccine) will require between 60-70% of the population to become infected. That's 229M people. COVID is also more fatal than the flu. Its IFR is roughly 1%. So 1% of 229M is 2.3M fatalities, and roughly 20M additional hospitalizations.
If you believe the IFR is lower, say .5% (still over 5x the flu), then you still have the same number of hospitalizations, but just 1.15M fatalities.
If you believe the IFR is the same as the flu (0.1%), then you'll still have 20M hospitalizations and 230K fatalities.
Say we're really lucky, and the IFR is the same as the flu, and we find a therapeutic drug to help treat it, dropping the IFR to half of the flu (0.05%), you have 114800 fatalities, but still the 20M hospitalizations.
The math is just brutal. What will the impact be of 20M hospitalizations, to say nothing of the deaths?
If you believe the IFR is lower, say .5% (still over 5x the flu), then you still have the same number of hospitalizations, but just 1.15M fatalities.
If you believe the IFR is the same as the flu (0.1%), then you'll still have 20M hospitalizations and 230K fatalities.
Say we're really lucky, and the IFR is the same as the flu, and we find a therapeutic drug to help treat it, dropping the IFR to half of the flu (0.05%), you have 114800 fatalities, but still the 20M hospitalizations.
The math is just brutal. What will the impact be of 20M hospitalizations, to say nothing of the deaths?