There is large scale data from the Chinese CDC:
The flu has a hospitalization rate of 1%. COVID-19 has a hospitalization rate from 4.7% to 13.8%. If it becomes widespread, hospitals will be overwhelmed, just like they are in China.
Yeah, why would anyone be concerned about that fire licking the corners of those oily rags in the corner when the fire in the fireplace is obviously burning much brighter?
If cancer stats were discussed on the news the same way Covid-19 was, we would react with a similar amount of panic. Out of sight, out of mind. But if it were in the news every.single.day, we’d be learning more about it, donating more money to it, creating more awareness for it etc.
As a somewhat similar example, when we were doing the ALS ice bucket challenge, they raised a ton more money than they did in other ‘normal’ years where no one was going out of there way to create awareness for it.
Having said there, you also have to keep in mind how this is different than cancer. There’s a big difference between catching a random virus while you’re out shopping and being dead a few weeks later vs a lifetime of bad habits (or random chance) getting you a cancer diagnosis and still living for years.
I’ve often said that cigarettes would have been made illegal hundreds of years ago if all the illnesses we associate with smoking came on within a year instead of 60 years.
It’s why policy makers suddenly took (or attempted to take) such swift action when people starting dying from certain types of vape pens.
TLDR, the fact that you can go from 100% healthy to dead in such a short span of time is part of what’s driving the panic.
Also, it’s new. The flu is old news.
There are not enough tests in the US and the ones that the CDC was using (may still be using for all I know) are not reliable.
There are multiple people in the US now who have gotten sick with no known contact with a sick person that there is concern about how contagious this is, and how it’s transmitted.
There is a nurse who was following protocol while caring for a known COVID-19 patient who still got the virus.
A 3% death rate with relatively high hospitalization rates is absolutely something we need to be concerned about. If nothing else, we need to slow this thing down to ease the burden on the health care system and to give researchers time to work on treatments and preventative measures. It is probably past time to pull the switch on social isolation in some population centers.
Exactly, if cancer or heart disease or ANY of the hundreds of other causes of death out there that kills hundreds per day, there would be as much attention and panic around them, as well. Every 60 seconds, someone on this planet is murdered. I guess nobody should go outside and risk it right? Keep your kids locked up in the house and don’t ever let them go out because they could die.
Everyday in the world, 900 people die from drowning. Yet, swimming pools and beaches are still open? Yeah, it’s a risk but we don’t overreact to it do we? We all still go swimming, to the beaches, even let our kids go without supervision or entrust them to someone else to make sure they don’t drown…imagine that.
Yes, the difference is that the flu or covid19 is a contagious virus and spreads quickly but you are mistaken that you just die from it if you get it. You painted an incorrect picture of someone being healthy one day and then dead the next. LOL. This is the reason why people panic because that’s what they think.
If you are a healthy person, you don’t even need medical or hospitalization. You are asked to just stay at home and self quarantine and like the common flu, you will recover. 92-96% recovery rate. The reason why we think it’s so scary and deadly is because we only see and hear about the deaths reported everyday but those numbers SMALL compared to reality. Only 1-4% of all cases are actually critical. That’s why there’s a very small mortality rate but of course we think it’s a lot because the news just keeps telling us that another person died. Well try telling us about everyone else who has died from falling. 1700 people a day die from falling. 2500 people die per day in car accidents…nobody is afraid to get into their cars but they are afraid to go outside because of COVID19.
Also, of the deaths, the majority of them are the elderly or people with underlying health issues. That means, that they are susceptible to easier/quick death naturally even if they contracted the common flu or any other virus, they are already at risk people. It’s not like teens or 20 somethings or 30 somethings are dying.
But I do agree that since it’s relatively unknown, that is the x factor and people are left to their imaginations of all possibilities when things are unknown lol. All the virus and zombie movies we’ve been filled with in our minds start to creep up into paranoia since there’s a large unknown factor. It’s also very disturbing to hear this virus apparently mutates quickly and that’s why people can get reinfected. To me, that is the game changer. But at this point, it’s not much worse than influenza.
The hospitalization rate is also due to mass panic. People who have a scratchy throat are throwing themselves into emergency wards and hospitals lol. It’s like the whole overusing the antibiotics thing, how people overused and abused antibiotics over small stuff that it made the viruses stronger and immune faster due to people’s overreactions and lack of common sense when it came to antibiotics.
Dude, we can hear you. Don’t be offensive.
The age related component in mortality is clearly important, and different this time. As a rough approximation it looks as of you have a doubling in mortality for every decade of age. People in their 90’s are looking at a 20% chance of dying. The Spanish flu killed the younger.
There are predictions that we might reasonably expect 50% of the population to contract the virus. Which means maybe 1% of the worlds population dying as a direct result. But potentially much more in 3rd world countries. This doesn’t include those that become critically ill but recover, which may be tens times this number. So you have maybe 10% of the populace becoming critically ill, one in ten of those dying. Even in your 30’s, if you have an underlying illness, such a bad asthma, you are much more at risk than your peers. The 1 in a thousand chance of dying might creep up to 1%, with a 10% chance you will need critical care. (Numbers obviously indicative rather than prescriptive.)
And this all happens in the next say six months. During which time there is no immunisation available. Clearly this is not good.
Part of managing the entire issue is to limit the rate of spread. If you assume that it has already got out, and won’t be contained, the only way to manage the situation is to try to keep the ongoing rate of infection low enough that the health system isn’t overwhelmed. Slow the rate down so that the critical cases are spread over a longer time. Which means personal discipline on everyone’s part. If you have symptoms, do get tested. Do self isolate, do observe basic hygiene practices, and basically - don’t be a dick.
Fine, reassure us. Nothing to fret about. China and Italy are stifling their economies because panic. but what, we worry? Insurers foresee losses greater than 9/11 claims but what, we worry? The US fired its pandemic response team but what, we worry? Medical professionals who’ve studied this stuff say it’s going bad but what, we worry? 
I can’t find an online statement from our main provider, Northern California’s largest medical group, but we got a robo-call telling coughing patients NOT to arrive at an emergency room but to schedule a fast “video consult” or computer chat to discuss possible symptoms. Which tells me they lack staff, test capacity, and quarantine facilities to handle the expected influx. How many health systems are discouraging patients?
Panic? Even paranoiacs have enemies. CoViD-19 sickens and kills at worrisome rates so fear is justified, especially given inappropriate political responses. When folks in my rural neighborhood start croaking, I’ll probably panic, too.
No hospital will admit you unless you are actually sick. Panic or no panic, the hospitalisation rate has nothing to do with that.
Presenting to a medical professional if you are worried your are ill is the right thing to do. The problem is with the ability of the medical system to cope and managing the information people have so that they only present themselves at a sensible level of illness. Even that isn’t a well defined thing.
Nitpick. Antibiotics don’t affect viruses, and viruses have not become immune to them. Bacteria are treated with antibiotics, and some have become resistant.
It seems U.S. hospitals are preparing for something rather more serious than the flu:
The point was made above, but it’s not that a new viral pandemic is necessarily so deadly in itself compared to, say, all cancers. It’s that the sudden need for acute care can overwhelm the capacity of the health care system to provide it–so on top of caring for patients with the virus, you’re looking at diminished ability to address other medical problems.
Oddly enough, one of the reasons people overuse antibiotics is because they conflate, equate or confuse bacterial infections with viral infections.
If people took all their antibiotics when they have a tooth pulled or finished the entire bottle as directed instead of stopping 2 days later when they feel better, them they wouldn’t have them sitting in their medicine cabinets so they could take them for a day or two every time they have a cold.
True story: I know someone who was prescribed antibiotics in Thailand for sunburn. That was mainly because he made such a nuisance insisting he be given something that they gave them to him just to get rid of him.
Well stated. While seasonal flu kills many people - 51,000 in the US in 2014, the overall mortality rate is about 0.1 to 0.2%: Disease Burden of Flu | CDC
By contrast the mortality rate of COVID-19 is currently about 2.5-3%. It is expected this may diminish to maybe 1 or 2%, but even if 1% that is about 10x the rate of seasonal flu.
Then question then becomes how will COVID-19 spread and can it be contained. This is partially related to the “basic reproduction number” or R0. For typical influenza, R0 is roughly 1.3. For COVID-19 R0 it’s maybe 2.3, but still being studied.
As a first approximation it appears COVID-19 has roughly 10x the death rate of seasonal influenza, and is roughly 2x as contagious. Obviously if it spread to the extent of a typical influenza season, a lot of people would die. As you stated the risk increases dramatically for those over age 60, and over age 70 it becomes very serious.
What about washing your hands, using alcohol gel, etc? The method of transmission for COVID-19 is being studied, but with influenza, the latest research shows maybe 50% is transmitted via aerosolized micro-particles: Study confirms flu likely spreads by aerosols, not just coughs, sneezes | CIDRAP
If COVID-19 is anything like that, no amount of alcohol gel or hand washing or face/hand control will prevent it. Those steps will help but will not allow “business as usual”.
Re advice “if you feel sick stay home” - that only works if an infected person is only contagious when they have symptoms. It mostly works for the flu because the incubation period is short, say 1-2 days. There is some evidence that COVID-19 may remain asymptomatic for 6-7 days - during which you could infect someone.
A recent study published in Lancet concludes that in most plausible outbreak scenarios, case isolation and contact tracing would be insufficient to control outbreaks: https://www.thelancet.com/journals/langlo/article/PIIS2214-109X(20)30074-7/fulltext
A set of leaked slides from an American Hospital Association webinar indicated hospitals are preparing for an impact about 10x a regular flu season. This may equate to 96 million cases in the US and 480,000 deaths: Presentation: US Hospitals Preparing for Millions of Hospitalizations
I fear also that people look at numbers like “10X worse than the flu” and have a naive mental model that isn’t in accordance with reality. It’s more like an engine that’s suddenly spun 10x as hard.
Medical impact does not scale linearly with severity. The medical system has a certain amount of slack built into it, once it reaches that point, tradeoffs start needing to be made that compromise medical integrity.
At the beginning, elective surgeries are postponed and minor cases are told to recover at home rather than a hospital bed. In more severe cases, makeshift wards are set up in hallways and retired medical personnel are drafted into service (this is where parts of Italy are right now).
Once you blow past those limits, real compromises in the healthcare system become inevitable. Any capacity for non-COVID cases completely disappears. People with any other kind of medical condition are unable to get treatment for lack of basic supplies. Your healthcare workers become completely compromised and they start dying or being taken out of commission. Equipment breaks down at faster than replacement rate and you run out of basic diagnostic capability. Secondary infection from inadequate procedures become a much larger threat than the underlying disease.
Hubei province briefly dipped into this territory and this was with less than 1% of their population infected. We have no idea what a medical system would look like (or how it impacts CFR) if we approach 10% of the entire population infected or god forbid, go over that line. People need to deeply understand “10X worse than the flu” doesn’t just mean take the flu deaths and multiple by 10.
Your points are valid, however in the above reference, Dr. James Lawler, (a professor at the University of Nebraska Medical Center referenced by the American Hospital Association) estimated 4.8 million hospitalizations, 96 million cases in the US, and 480,000 deaths in the US. This was not a naive mental model but an informed estimate based on current data and trends.
Of course the healthcare system would be stressed and of course things would be learned, but the “10x” number was not purely a projected healthcare stress level but a fatality level relative to seasonal influenza. This would have a great impact to the healthcare system but that was because of a projected 10x fatality number relative to influenza. He extrapolated this to a 10x “disease burden”. Whether that burden tracks linearly with fatalities, we will see in due time.