It's essentially a somewhat more intense flu with no herd immunity, which means instead of spreading itself nicely throughout the year it comes in at once in a massive exponential spike that blows out the medical system
I'm kinda curious though if this quarantining is also gonna significantly help with any other diseases already out in the wild. Would be nice if we ended up also clearing out some of the regular flu stains too
I seem to recall that during the svine flu, kindergardens and schools emphasized better hygiene (wash hands, hand sanitizer, cough in elbow) - with a (at least anecdotal) dramatic reduction in sick leave. As kids didn't get sick at the same rate, did not infect parents who did not spread it in the work place at the usual rate.
Death rate is between 5x-25x higher, hospitalization rate even higher than that. Regular flu has a .01 death rate, Covid is at .08 right now in Korea and like 4% in Italy.
Actually think they just forgot the % sign, and added extra zeros to flu and Korea numbers. I think they meant to say 0.1% and 0.8%, which isn’t far off.
It’s worth noting Italy’s much higher death rate is because the hospitals are full, and this is likely to happen in other countries soon. The proportion of Covid-19 patients that require intubation is much higher than that of flu.
Several other European countries and the US are on roughly the same infection rate trajectory as Italy, just a few weeks behind. Unless they significantly slow it down, it seems likely their health systems will be overwhelmed too, and their death rates could start looking more like Italy’s.
Italy is probably also just not testing people who don't have serious symptoms. They've been hovering around a 15% positive rate on tests, about half of which have to be hospitalized, which is a lot compared to other countries.
I'm kinda curious though if this quarantining is also gonna significantly help with any other diseases already out in the wild. Would be nice if we ended up also clearing out some of the regular flu stains too