This seems to be overstating things.<p>> COVID-19 seems to be most severe in older adults.<p>The median age of deaths is 75. I guess that’s technically “older adults” but I think “elderly” would be a better description.<p><a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/23/world/asia/coronavirus-victims-wuhan.html" rel="nofollow">https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/23/world/asia/coronavirus-vi...</a><p>> there are a number of indications that it will be very much like the 1918 Flu Pandemic<p>The New England Journal of Medicine has a different take:<p><a href="https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMe2002387" rel="nofollow">https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMe2002387</a><p>It sounds increasingly likely that the fatality rate is less than 1%, potentially a lot less, as were now hearing that 80% of people don’t even get sick enough to seek medical attention, and many have no signs of illness at all — which means the denominator in the death rate is likely much higher than is accounted for in the common 2% metric from the first data.<p>> Expect people you know to die.<p>Aside from this likely being inaccurate, is this language even remotely helpful?
> For those of you who don’t know me well, I am a preventive medicine physician and infectious disease epidemiologist. I graduated from the CDC’s Epidemic Intelligence Service and have over 17 years of experience in the field, most of that with CDC.<p>For those here expressing skepticism of the author's (admittedly dire) predictions, what set of credentials should someone have before you take what they say seriously? Not trying to be snarky. Perhaps I simply wish to understand more of what people find convincing in situations like this and why.
I think a lot of the comments in this discussion risk understating the potential impact of the virus. Yes, there are many unknowns, and we might not encounter the worst-case scenario. But many experts have basis for being worried, e.g. listen to these interviews [1,2]. It will take a while before the virus really spreads in the US/Europe but it seems pretty clear that it's not contained anymore. Remarks about the fatality rate cut both ways: if it's lower than reported it means that the virus is spreading faster than we think (more mild cases), if it's higher than reported there are going to be many more fatalities still. There are arguments to be made for both (lower: many mild cases go undetected, higher: reported fatality rates often seem to be calculated from active cases, not complete cases). Either way it's clear that in China the rate of infection was well beyond what hospitals could handle which seems to indicate that we might encounter similar issues.<p>Let's just be careful and be prepared, there really seems to be too little info to get comfortable with this at this point.<p>[1] <a href="https://www.stitcher.com/podcast/deep-background-with-noah-feldman/e/67663436" rel="nofollow">https://www.stitcher.com/podcast/deep-background-with-noah-f...</a><p>[2] <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/27/podcasts/the-daily/coronavirus.html" rel="nofollow">https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/27/podcasts/the-daily/corona...</a>
Honest question: how one can ditinguish coronavirus from other "pandemics" of recent years like svine flu or bird flu or whatnot? Those happened primarily on TV news, and the informational background was about the same: apocalyptic pictures of empty airport, packed hospitals, etc. Why should an average Joe care more this time?
I am seeing some harsh comments here out of fear. I dealt with the same reaction from family members.<p>The U.S. is doing very little to prevent this. A lot of people, especially elderly people, will likely die.<p>It will also likely have a severe impact on the market. The sooner we can all accept this and prepare the better.
Just FYI: Reddit /r/coronavirus is having an AMA with a panel of experts from WebMD on Wednesday, March 4 at 12pm EST<p>/r/covid19 is an interesting scientific discussion of the topic.
What is wrong with this god-damned site? Seriously, this post was #25 on the front page, I check again and it's buried 4 pages deep literally 10 minutes later.<p>Some people in this community are in really deep denial and do not understand the concept of asymmetric risk.<p>This is a clearly written piece that can be shared widely with your network, especially for people who may not be clued in to the situation. Please share this.
> COVID-19 seems to be most severe in older adults. Children and young adults generally have mild infections. We are grateful for this.<p>I'm sorry to ask this .. why are we grateful for this?
>> It’s possible that COVID-19 will be similar to a bad flu year but there are a number of indications that it will be very much like the 1918 Flu Pandemic.<p>This, right here, is horseshit. There is no way whatsoever it will be like the 1918 Flu Pandemic, unless we've utterly failed as a society and did not invent anything in the last 102 years. In 1918 we didn't yet have _penicillin_, let alone antiviral drugs.<p>More accurate prediction: this will be only slightly worse than the seasonal flu we endure every year. In fact, it's quite possible that this year in the US more people will die of the complications of the flu, than of COVID19.