[all_blue_chucks]

If too many people get this simultaneously we will overwhelm the healthcare system and this will switch from tragedy to horror. Everyone please do everything you can to avoid catching and spreading this until we have enough testing to track this and respond effectively.

[dnautics]

While simple actions o prevent spread are probably not unreasonable (why aren't we doing these every flu season)? I think the scale of horror is grossly misperceived. For example, It's most likely that the scale of death from covid-19 will be at least one, if not two orders of magnitude lower than annual vehicular deaths in the us.

[charliemil4]

For everyone else, this is pegging Covid-19 deaths to ~36,000 [0]

(was curious)

[0] https://www.iihs.org/topics/fatality-statistics/detail/state...

[Thorrez]

More like 360-3600 (dnautics said 1-2 orders of magnitude lower than vehicle deaths).

[randallsquared]

...and there are 3500 recorded deaths so far from COVID-19, so we've very likely already exceeded this estimate as of March 7, 2020.

[mstolpm]

Please don't mix national and worldwide numbers: WHO estimates 1,350,000 traffic related death worldwide [1]. That said, every single loss of life is a tragedy by itself.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_traffic-r...

[Thorrez]

I think dnautics was just talking about the US, so there are only 19 deaths so far.

[ericb]

There are only 37,000 motor vehicle fatalities/yr in the US. Care to show your work, because my numbers come out in the millions on our current no-mitigation, pretend-it-will-go-away trajectory.

[dnautics]

If your estimate is in the millions... I'm happy to bet you a thousand dollars that in the US deaths don't go more than 50k, ten thousand dollars it doesn't go more than 500k, to be settled at the close of 2020.

[ericb]

I have fairly low confidence in the high end numbers, because there's a chance the US would "wake up." Your low number bet seems like a layup! There is something appalling about "rooting" for death that doesn't sit well with my values though.

All that said, I still mostly want to see your work. This isn't my specialty, and if you have well thought out optimistic numbers they would make me and a lot of people feel better--they would relieve a lot of anxiety.

[dnautics]

I'm a scientist by training, so all I'm gonna say is that numbers don't exist in a vacuum. There are lots of undiscussed factors that to my eyes go towards inflating the numerical values being discussed, for example, there being a huge festival with relatively poor sanitation and a high transmissibility likelihood in the city with the primary blast radius and a general difference in hygeine culture between China and the US, and the US being less population dense in general. In my circle, probably about 10% actively self-label as germophobic, and even I as a relatively dirty person have started more meticulously washing hands and self-segregating while feeling under the weather this season.

In the us, we have signs in restaurants reminding employees (and customers) to wash their hands. Now in all honesty probably only 80% do in normal times but certainly more are now, and in any case, it's part of the active day to day thinking (or even better, it's part of letting the monkey drive) in our culture.

[all_blue_chucks]

If this spreads widely enough and quickly enough the numbers we have point to a death rate that isn't even in the same ballpark as traffic fatalities. There are 7 billion people on this planet and none of them have immunity to this.