[throwaway_tech]

Why use S.Korea's numbers? Haven't they lead the best response in terms of testing and don't they have universal healthcare? It seems to me fatality rates would likely be higher in countries that: 1) aren't testing so aggressively and 2) don't have universal access to care.

Maybe I am wrong though and there is good reason to believe S.Korea is the best example right now to use as a statistics model to apply across the entire world.

[arcticbull]

Part of the reason their numbers are so low is because they're testing, which is revealing the stacks upon stacks of asymptomatic cases or cases which lead to the sniffles. That's why we know the actual mortality rates are so much lower than the media is screaming breathlessly about.

Think about it: not a single story about the myriad people who've recovered completely, right? There've been 114,000 documented cases so far and 66,000 have recovered. The number of active/unresolved cases remains well below its peak.

[throwaway_tech]

>Part of the reason their numbers are so low is because they're testing, which is revealing the stacks upon stacks of asymptomatic cases or cases which lead to the sniffles.

I don't disagree, but my point is S.Korea is not just testing they are treating...if they were not treating presumably the mortality rates would increase. In other words whereas you suggest testing is proving the mortality rate is low, who many of those who tested positive received treatment? and further, got better because of treatment?

Testing is the key to treatment and minimizing mortality rates, other countries are failing on the testing, so it can be presumed they are also failing to treat (how can you treat when people aren't being tested).

[arcticbull]

> I don't disagree, but my point is S.Korea is not just testing they are treating...

There aren't really any treatments broadly available. They're holing people up in hospital beds and providing supportive care if needed. There's a few antiviral treatments in the pipeline.

[throwaway_tech]

>They're holing people up in hospital beds and providing supportive care if needed.

That is pretty important for people at risk. Consider lack of supportive care is what leads to most preventable deaths from regular flu progressing to other issues that will result in death, not the flu itself. For example dehydration and lung infections can be monitored and treated.

[arcticbull]

I'm just saying it's not "treatment" in the classical sense and I didn't want to imply there was a treatment.

[altcognito]

You're wrong, but primarily because you insist on treating human life so trivially. Get to work eh? A best case scenario, one where the actual CFR is half what the evidence shows now is 0.25%. 30% of the population gets the flu in a regular year, so, for America that ends up being a flu season that kills 10 times more people than in an average year.

But you're focus on people hacking and wheezing their way to death. You're ignoring upwards of 5-15% of those people who will have to be on a ventilator OR WORSE. This is NOTHING like the flu.

You would do yourself a favor also to examine what it is that Italy, Wuhan and South Korea are going through to try and stop it. They certainly aren't "GOING BACK TO WORK."

[arcticbull]

> You're wrong, but primarily because you insist on treating human life so trivially.

No, it's because I'm not overweighting risks that are trivial for the vast, vast majority of people. Of course if you're over 80 and have 3 pre-existing comorbid conditions (as is in Italy) you should be careful. If you're under 10, nobody's died. In fact nCoV-19 doesn't really even spread between children. If you're under 40 the mortality rate is 0.2%, and that's a worse-case number including folks with co-morbid conditions.

Risk exists, and we should be comfortable with it. I recommend reading Schneier's essay on our decreasing tolerance for risk [1] and how it can often lead to us doing ourselves more harm than good.

You have a 1% lifetime risk of dying in a car accident. You've got a 2% lifetime risk of dying of an opioid overdose.

> But you're focus on people hacking and wheezing their way to death. You're ignoring upwards of 5-15% of those people who will have to be on a ventilator OR WORSE. This is NOTHING like the flu.

Yes, it is like the flu. H1N1 Influenza A has a ~10% mortality rate in the elderly, similar to nCoV-19.

> You would do yourself a favor also to examine what it is that Italy, Wuhan and South Korea are going through to try and stop it. They certainly aren't "GOING BACK TO WORK."

Really the economic and individual harm and impact there has a lot to do with what they're doing to try and stop the spread. The cure is worse than the disease here.

They probably should go back to work, though, and in China, they already are. They should wash their hands and stay home if they're sick, and get back to work.

[1] https://www.schneier.com/essays/archives/2013/08/our_decreas...

[FabHK]

> Yes, it is like the flu. H1N1 Influenza A has a ~10% mortality rate in the elderly, similar to nCoV-19.

Just as a reminder, the 2009 H1N1 pandemic killed maybe half a million people (150,000–575,000) with a CFR of 0.01-0.08%.

Here, current CFR estimates are 5 to 100 times higher.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2009_flu_pandemic

[altcognito]

How many deaths will warrant taking preventive actions I wonder? (preventative actions like quarantine, which, was the only way it was stopped from spreading before China "went back to work")

[arcticbull]

I'm not saying that the reaction wasn't warranted initially when we had no idea how bad the disease was. What I'm saying is the level of panic, especially now, is totally unjustified. The hoarding canned goods and battening down the hatches. Insane relative to risk.

[altcognito]

And I'm asking you, with the number of infection doubling daily in countries that don't batten down the hatches, or quarantine because everyone should just get back to work as you said -- what is the acceptable number of deaths before quarantine is acceptable?