There is little doubt, and it has been obvious for some time, that COVID-19 will become as endemic as the other coronaviruses, those of cold and flu. If you are young and healthy, your chances of dying is about 1 in 500 (from the same source as your data): https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/coronavirus-age-sex-demographics/
Significantly higher than the flu, but not “oh my God, we all gonna die!” high. So,
YOU WILL GET EXPOSED TO COVID-19
virus with 90%+ confidence, within the next year or two. You may well remain asymptomatic, of course and not even know that you have been infected.
Yes, you should stock up and such, but only because of the disproportional auto-immune reaction by the freaking out society. Just like with 9/11, the most harm will came from the people reacting to it. So, a better question is not to how to prepare for the coming pandemic, but how to prepare for the inevitable mass panic and overreaction. It is likely to be bad for a few months, then it will blow over, with some residual long tail dragging on for some time, like it happened with basically every scary event in history, lately including 9/11 and the subprime crisis.
I think the economic impact will also be huge. Businesses are prepared for 2% of their workers being out with the flu on any given day through the winter, but not for 20% to be sick while the other 80% are quarantined as COVID-19 hits their city. And the company who needs the input parts from that first business is not prepared to not have them for a month, and the companies that rely on them are not prepared, and most industries have slim enough cash reserves and profit margins that a pandemic can knock a lot good companies out of business for good. This could all mean just slightly more expensive electronics for two years, or it could mean a decade of unemployment and restructuring.
And this is why I think less and not more permission to panik would be warranted. Our reaction to Covid 19 is likely much more dangerous than the virus itself. So less reaction would arguably be better.
20% Sick is way too much, since that would require everyone to be exposed at once.
Epidemics tend to be exponential at first and then become subexponential way before saturation. Seasonal flu does this for example. Do you have any reason to expect Covid 19 to behave different?
That is currently the worst case scenario death rate. The absolute ceiling to our estimates. The actual death rate will very likely be much much lower. Becuse we have no good figures on how many people are actually infected. How many infected have very mild responses and dont even show proper symptoms and so they wont seek help and wont get tested? That information will only be available months if not years later.
Swine flu has estimated 0.02% death rate now. When the 2009 pandemic hit, the panic was also great. The media reported death rate in the first weeks was also much higher than the actual rate turned out to be.
For an example lets say 10 people are hospitalised in a very serious condition. They get tested and turns out it is some sort of a new virus never seen before. 5 of them die before any new cases are discovered. The death rate will be 50%. But you have no idea yet if we have a world threatening pandemic on our doorstep or a very mild case of a 99.999% of the times an asymptomatic virus.
disproportional auto-immune reaction by the freaking out society
Sadly this is indeed the pandemic we need to react to time and time again. There however are some conflicting and potentially worrisome reports about the possibility of being re-infected, some concerns about long term complications and etc which should raise the severity of our response to this outbreak but not to the level of panic we are having now.
It is a good thing to move when seeing smoke but you dont want to start evacuating skyscrapers and hospitals every time someone smells something that could be smoke(er)
I think this is false. There’s some strong but circumstantial evidence available about how many cases are asymptomatic or only very mild. That evidence is factored into the most recent death rate estimates. The media continues citing the wrong stuff in lots of places, but people who search carefully can find somewhat robust information about the death rate by now, and even though I haven’t checked the source for the 1 in 500 number closely, it for several reasons seems unlikely to me that it’s based on the naive calculation.
If anything 1 in 500 is more likely to be an optimistic scenario because it doesn’t factor in that 5% even of healthy people will still require hospital attention, and in true pandemic conditions, hospitals won’t have enough room. The hospital in Wuhan were overcrowded, and yet only very roughly 5% of Wuhan’s population got the virus. (And yes those 5% include mild or asymptomatic cases; confirmed cases was only 0.5%.)
There is little doubt, and it has been obvious for some time, that COVID-19 will become as endemic as the other coronaviruses, those of cold and flu. If you are young and healthy, your chances of dying is about 1 in 500 (from the same source as your data): https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/coronavirus-age-sex-demographics/
Significantly higher than the flu, but not “oh my God, we all gonna die!” high. So,
YOU WILL GET EXPOSED TO COVID-19
virus with 90%+ confidence, within the next year or two. You may well remain asymptomatic, of course and not even know that you have been infected.
Yes, you should stock up and such, but only because of the disproportional auto-immune reaction by the freaking out society. Just like with 9/11, the most harm will came from the people reacting to it. So, a better question is not to how to prepare for the coming pandemic, but how to prepare for the inevitable mass panic and overreaction. It is likely to be bad for a few months, then it will blow over, with some residual long tail dragging on for some time, like it happened with basically every scary event in history, lately including 9/11 and the subprime crisis.
I think the economic impact will also be huge. Businesses are prepared for 2% of their workers being out with the flu on any given day through the winter, but not for 20% to be sick while the other 80% are quarantined as COVID-19 hits their city. And the company who needs the input parts from that first business is not prepared to not have them for a month, and the companies that rely on them are not prepared, and most industries have slim enough cash reserves and profit margins that a pandemic can knock a lot good companies out of business for good. This could all mean just slightly more expensive electronics for two years, or it could mean a decade of unemployment and restructuring.
And this is why I think less and not more permission to panik would be warranted. Our reaction to Covid 19 is likely much more dangerous than the virus itself. So less reaction would arguably be better. 20% Sick is way too much, since that would require everyone to be exposed at once. Epidemics tend to be exponential at first and then become subexponential way before saturation. Seasonal flu does this for example. Do you have any reason to expect Covid 19 to behave different?
It’s 1 in 500 if you are young; lower if you’re young and healthy; higher if you’re young and unhealthy. Or am I misreading?
Yeah, you are right. There should be some stats for a given age group for just the (mostly) healthy individuals.
That is currently the worst case scenario death rate. The absolute ceiling to our estimates. The actual death rate will very likely be much much lower. Becuse we have no good figures on how many people are actually infected. How many infected have very mild responses and dont even show proper symptoms and so they wont seek help and wont get tested? That information will only be available months if not years later.
Swine flu has estimated 0.02% death rate now. When the 2009 pandemic hit, the panic was also great. The media reported death rate in the first weeks was also much higher than the actual rate turned out to be.
For an example lets say 10 people are hospitalised in a very serious condition. They get tested and turns out it is some sort of a new virus never seen before. 5 of them die before any new cases are discovered. The death rate will be 50%. But you have no idea yet if we have a world threatening pandemic on our doorstep or a very mild case of a 99.999% of the times an asymptomatic virus.
Sadly this is indeed the pandemic we need to react to time and time again. There however are some conflicting and potentially worrisome reports about the possibility of being re-infected, some concerns about long term complications and etc which should raise the severity of our response to this outbreak but not to the level of panic we are having now.
It is a good thing to move when seeing smoke but you dont want to start evacuating skyscrapers and hospitals every time someone smells something that could be smoke(er)
I think this is false. There’s some strong but circumstantial evidence available about how many cases are asymptomatic or only very mild. That evidence is factored into the most recent death rate estimates. The media continues citing the wrong stuff in lots of places, but people who search carefully can find somewhat robust information about the death rate by now, and even though I haven’t checked the source for the 1 in 500 number closely, it for several reasons seems unlikely to me that it’s based on the naive calculation.
See these estimates about the case fatality rate: https://www.imperial.ac.uk/media/imperial-college/medicine/sph/ide/gida-fellowships/Imperial-College-2019-nCoV-severity-10-02-2020.pdf
They don’t break them down by age groups though.
If anything 1 in 500 is more likely to be an optimistic scenario because it doesn’t factor in that 5% even of healthy people will still require hospital attention, and in true pandemic conditions, hospitals won’t have enough room. The hospital in Wuhan were overcrowded, and yet only very roughly 5% of Wuhan’s population got the virus. (And yes those 5% include mild or asymptomatic cases; confirmed cases was only 0.5%.)