[temac]

We don't usually call a disease that can easily evolve to pneumonie "a cold". And your focus on the supposedly low lethality is misplaced. Way more people need a stay in an hospital (sometimes short). This disease has the power to double (or even worse) the mortality rate of industrialized country during months or even years.

That some people are even asymptomatic is not even a particularly good news IMO. It will just spread more because of that...

[jeltz]

I am personally 100% on board with halting the economy to fight COVID-19, but your are factually incorrect. The influenza is often called "a cold" and it does cause pneumonia. I have gotten pneumonia most likely from it and so have several people I know.

[CriticalCathed]

>We don't usually call a disease that can easily evolve to pneumonie "a cold".

That's not true. Just not true. Colds and influenza regularly proceed to pnemonia or long lasting secondary lower respiratory infections, especially in the elderly but also in the young and healthy.

>Way more people need a stay in an hospital (sometimes short).

No that isn't clear at all. The current understanding is that because the infectivity is so high the proportion of cases that are serious come in many times faster than other respiratory viruses, and on TOP of other respiratory illnesses.

>This disease as the power to double (or even worse) the mortality rate of industrialized country during months or even years.

That's potentially true, but it isn't necessarily true. The excess mortality of this disease -- it is plausible and it can be sensibly argued, may not be that high. That is because it is killing, in general, those who are already ill. In Italy 88% of those who have died had one or more serious commodities such as heart disease, and that is on top of the fact that the median age of death is currently 81 (median case age 63.) An unknown but potentially high proportion of these deaths may have happened in the next two years anyway. So at the end of this the excess mortality rates may not be anywhere close to double amortized over two years, and consequently in two years we might see a drop in general mortality rates as a result (if this illness does end up infecting >50% of the population as some leaders have seen fit to say.

>That some people are even asymptomatic is not even a particularly good news IMO. It will just spread more because of that...

It is good news, definitely. Because it means that we don't need to worry about most people. We need to worry about those at high risk. We may be able to get through this by focusing on isolating, social distancing, and providing at home resource for those at significant risk. Such a strategy, if properly done, could even be used to allow the illness to travel through the otherwise not vulnerable population creating herd immunity which will allow those at risk to come out of quarantine earlier.