[rm_-rf_]

What I would encourage people to consider is whether this virus is at the level that we would all be happy to allow military enforced city-wide quarantines or travel restrictions...

I understand that this is NOT the flu, but it seems like the best data we have puts the most pessimistic CFR at about 0.6% if you look at the South Korean data (who have done, by far, the best job testing en masse).

I agree that slowing the spread of the virus to help our health care workers avoid being inundated with admissions to the ICU is worth while, but I'm extremely skeptical of embracing what China has done.

[ummonk]

> but it seems like the best data we have puts the most pessimistic CFR at about 0.6% if you look at the South Korean data

Check your stats. 0.77% of South Koreans who tested positive for the virus have died already, and more of them will die in the future. The CFR is likely to be above 1%.

[rm_-rf_]

Right now the best information I've heard from several epidemiologists who study pandemics is that we are still seeing the results of severity bias, in that people with absolutely no symptoms will be far less likely to get tested. Also, South Korea is not seeing anything close to an exponential increase in cases.

When those same experts see numbers coming out of Italy, they believe very strongly that the number of infected is far higher than being reported because testing is not as widespread.

[scarmig]

~0.5% is a very reasonable estimate of the initial CFR when an epidemic starts. It's bad, around 5x as much as the flu, but probably not worth a national China-style quarantine.

But it has a key context: that's the CFR for when all patients are treated. In most of China, there were never enough infections to trigger a healthcare system collapse: that's why in all but one province, the CFR was indeed ~0.4%.

In one province, Hubei, the medical system did collapse.

Its CFR jumped to 3-4%. That is worth going to extreme measures to prevent. In the USA, that would amount to ~10M dead.

That is not a seasonal flu.

I think a superior approach for most of the world is one along the lines of Singapore, Taiwan, and South Korea: extensive testing and contact tracing and limited but real quarantine measures. But, yes, everything should be on the table to prevent the nightmare healthcare system collapse scenario.

[nopinsight]

CFR of 0.6% is a very optimistic figure. It is a naive calculation based on current # deaths / # infections.

1) But # infections were growing exponentially, we need to use numbers from the same cohort, which implies much lower # infections & higher CFR. Naive CFR will go up once infections grow more slowly. (It already is higher than 0.6%).

2) South Korean confirmed cases are much younger than their median age, mainly between 20-29 years old (perhaps because of where superspreading events happen—that church). This age group has a much lower fatality rate from Covid-19.

3) # hospital beds per capita in South Korea is second highest among OECD countries (1st is Japan) and ~4 times that of the US. They already have patients waiting for beds. Most countries will do much worse if they reach the same # infections per capita.

[jacobolus]

CFR changes dramatically depending on whether people can get hospital care.

[hcknwscommenter]

We can embrace what China has done, or what S. Korea has done, or what Singapore has done, or what Italy has finally started doing. Any of those would have a dramatically positive effect. Right now, we (U.S.) haven't done any of that. That is the problem.