The Swine Flu infected 61 million people and killed 18,000. Amazing, how who the President is can have such an effect on the reporting. Makes a guy cynical.
The Swine Flu of 2009 was a complete non-event for me. When in my shop or driving, I listened to NPR and whatever they said about the swine flu had no impact on me, I don't even remember the swine flu.
The years 2009-10 I was traveling a lot, from the East coast to the West coast, I participated in at least a dozen blacksmith events, personally interacted with thousands of people. Never a word about the swine flu. At one point, I spent 8 weeks at a large craft school, we ate buffet style and yet in the middle of a declared pandemic, no signs reminding us to wash our hands and no cleaning stations at the entrance to the dining hall. Quite the contrast between then and today.
The Swine Flu infected 61 million people and killed 18,000. Amazing, how who the President is can have such an effect on the reporting. Makes a guy cynical.
A whole lot we don't know about the Wuhan Flu. We DO know it can overwhelm hospitals, as it has done so in China and Italy, and threatens to do so in Washington State and other places. I don't think the Swine Flu ever did that.
It's worth taking a short-term economic hit to buy time while we learn about it and look for treatments and vaccines.
Also, to anyone in the UK: sure hope the plan works. Herd immunity can work, but Good Lord you're taking a lot of chances. When I say I hope it works, I truly do hope so and it would be excellent news. Still....
My credentials are exactly the same as the guy who wrote the article: engineering degree with an MBA. With that I say: “outputs of predictive models are completely meaningless without showing the confidence intervals”. Which he conveniently did not do.
Also, he shouldn’t assume orders of magnitude higher disease rates due to asymptomatic people and then conveniently ignore that when calculating mortality rate. It’s disingenuous.
I understand what you're saying, panic can overwhelm a hospital just like it can overwhelm a Costco, but panic doesn't give people pneumonia and put them on respirators. Lombardy ran out of respirators and has to do triage. Some get to breathe, some don't. This isn't just the flu. How bad it is and will be, I don't know. I just know it CAN get bad. My wife's cousin is a Lombard nurse who caught it, at work I presume. Her fever is down, but they're still giving her oxygen. I'd be happy to learn my paranoia is groundless, but I'm sticking to it for now.
My credentials are not relevant. Have you critically thought about the situation or are you just making decisions based off of media hysteria? If it's the latter -- don't worry that's what entire governments are doing anyway. Seems like the UK are the only ones being sensible about it. Take a look here at a scientific look a the situation, even if the math goes over your head, maybe you can believe the authors and their credentials: ADJUSTED AGE-SPECIFIC CASE FATALITY RATIO DURING THECOVID-19EPIDEMIC INHUBEI, CHINA, JANUARY ANDFEBRUARY2020. By their estimates, 51% of infected are asymptomatic. A relevant chart from the same document showing estimated death rates at far lower than is being reported in the media: TsVJrle.jpg
The Diamond Princess cruise ship infection is the best info we have, in my opinion.
Here are the numbers:
3,700 passengers and crew
700 confirmed cases
7 confirmed deaths
So, 1% of the infected die. Cruise ship passengers aren't the fittest of the fit, of course. On the other hand, very frail people don't take cruises.
The swine flu case fatality rate was 0.01–0.03%. So three to ten times worse than swine flu. The 1918 flu was 2-3%, so not as bad as that.
There is a theory circulating of a mutational split, and that's how some people are explaining the numbers seeming to vary in different countries, where one it seems like a terrifying monster and the other has people getting over it and reporting they're fine. Of course these theories are just internet speculation, I don't know how many actual experts are getting behind it. I will say it looks like the US cases are all not a big deal. Rest and drink lots of cold gatorade and it seems you do alright if you don't have comorbidity issues. The big problem here seems to be how stupidly opaque China is with information. When China reported death and infection rate numbers, we had no way to trust anything they were putting out because Xi Jinping proudly sits on a throne of lies. There are still rumors of after-effects and persistent infection that could be really bad, but they are still just rumors. Unfortunately we need long term data from a country that's a little more trustworthy to rule them out. I'm pretty confident though if I get it it won't be a huge deal. I am not so confident in how our economy is going to deal with this, since the whole thing runs like the fortunes of a short sighted celebrity, living to the absolute limit of their means and having no ability to continue once the fame dies out.