# How concerned are you about this Coronavirus? **URL:** \ **Category:** The Quarantine Zone\ **Tags:** covid-quarantine\ **Created:** [January 29, 2020, 3:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-concerned-are-you-about-this-coronavirus/847164 "2020-01-29T15:23:50Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 27
**Author:** ![susan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/susan/32/17537_2.png) [@susan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/susan)\ **Post date:** [March 8, 2020, 3:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-concerned-are-you-about-this-coronavirus/847164/524 "2020-03-08T15:01:49Z")
Reported. ---
**Author:** ![DSeid](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dseid/32/20194_2.png) [@DSeid](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DSeid)\ **Post date:** [March 8, 2020, 5:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-concerned-are-you-about-this-coronavirus/847164/525 "2020-03-08T17:38:18Z")
> [@monstro](#): > > … Do you think governments who have been [quarantining their populations](https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-51787238) are overreacting? … Yes I do. ---
**Author:** ![Shmendrik](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ee7513/32.png) [@Shmendrik](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Shmendrik)\ **Post date:** [March 8, 2020, 7:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-concerned-are-you-about-this-coronavirus/847164/526 "2020-03-08T19:17:23Z")
> [@DSeid](#): > > Yes I do. > **[Medico Humanitas su Facebook: «Situazione drammatica, altro che normale...](https://bergamo.corriere.it/notizie/cronaca/20_marzo_07/coronavirus-bergamo-medico-humanitas-facebook-situazione-drammatica-altro-che-normale-influenza-4fdf6866-6088-11ea-8d61-438e0a276fc4.shtml)** > > Una testimonianza importante sulla reale portata del coronavirus e sui medici in trincea per far fronte all’emergenza. Could you read this (with Google translate) and comment? Thanks. Sent from my Pixel 4 XL using Tapatalk ---
**Author:** ![Magiver](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/4491bb/32.png) [@Magiver](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Magiver)\ **Post date:** [March 8, 2020, 8:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-concerned-are-you-about-this-coronavirus/847164/527 "2020-03-08T20:16:25Z")
> [@monstro](#): > > **Magiver** , you’ve been too busy bleating “China sucks!” to notice that your own government is not winning any awards in emergency response management. Instead of lobbing insults at me, why don’t you start scrutinizing the people you elected? Hold them accountable, just this one time. If you actually read what I said about China I gave them great credit in their efforts to shut it down. We don’t have the political power of a communist nation who can do whatever they want to their citizens. I did criticize their deliberate attempt to hush it up. This is something that doubles every 6 days so they essentially screwed the rest of the planet out of at least a month’s worth of prep. There are no off-the-shelf tests or cures for this. And since it’s a virus there will never be a cure for it, just a preventive shot and that takes times to develop. As for the politics of it I responded to what you said. You’re well educated and should know when you’re being stroked by CNN during an election year. Their news consists of the following: Trump, something bad. This is essentially another viral scenario and it’s GOING to spread. If it’s worse than current viruses then the results will be worse. We go through this every year and the end result is the same. A new strain of something comes out, a test and vaccine are developed and the chips fall where they may. There’s no guarantee a vaccine will be effective. We aren’t going to be able to quarantine cities like China. Sports and entertainment venues might get shut down. That’s about it. ---
**Author:** ![DSeid](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dseid/32/20194_2.png) [@DSeid](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DSeid)\ **Post date:** [March 8, 2020, 8:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-concerned-are-you-about-this-coronavirus/847164/528 "2020-03-08T20:27:51Z")
**Shmendrik** , Not much to comment on: one person writing breathlessly. What is seen in Italy from [influenza](https://www.ijidonline.com/article/S1201-9712(19)30328-5/fulltext)? > [@](#): > > We estimated excess deaths of 7,027, 20,259, 15,801 and 24,981 attributable to influenza epidemics in the 2013/14, 2014/15, 2015/16 and 2016/17, respectively, using the Goldstein index. The average annual mortality excess rate per 100,000 ranged from 11.6 to 41.2 with most of the influenza-associated deaths per year registered among the elderly. … In recent years, Italy has been registering peaks in death rates, particularly among the elderly during the winter season. A mortality rate of 10.7 per 1,000 inhabitants was observed in the winter season 2014/2015 … a remarkable excess death attributable to influenza in Italy during the winter seasons 2014/15 and 2016/17, which was independent from mean weekly extreme temperature variations. Our results show that during these two seasons, in Italy, a high proportion of deaths was observed among the elderly (96.1% and 77.7%, respectively) … So far under 400 have died from COVID-19 in Italy. That is bad and it will get worse. The writer’s portrayal of their system, able to handle a season of influenza illnesses that led to 25,000 deaths (and still with a public responding declining influenza vaccination more often than not), as being a war literally exploded? Seems a bit much. ---
**Author:** ![eenerms](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/cdc98d/32.png) [@eenerms](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/eenerms)\ **Post date:** [March 8, 2020, 8:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-concerned-are-you-about-this-coronavirus/847164/529 "2020-03-08T20:29:08Z")
All pubs are closed in Florence, italy:(. ---
**Author:** ![Shmendrik](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ee7513/32.png) [@Shmendrik](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Shmendrik)\ **Post date:** [March 8, 2020, 9:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-concerned-are-you-about-this-coronavirus/847164/530 "2020-03-08T21:00:31Z")
> [@DSeid](#): > > **Shmendrik** , > > Not much to comment on: one person writing breathlessly. > > What is seen in Italy from [influenza](https://www.ijidonline.com/article/S1201-9712(19)30328-5/fulltext)? > > So far under 400 have died from COVID-19 in Italy. That is bad and it will get worse. The writer’s portrayal of their system, able to handle a season of influenza illnesses that led to 25,000 deaths (and still with a public responding declining influenza vaccination more often than not), as being a war literally exploded? Seems a bit much. The 400 deaths are concentrated in a region containing about a quarter of Italy’s population, at most. And I think most of them are concentrated among a significantly smaller population than that. Obviously the repurposing of other areas in the hospital as makeshift ICU beds shows that this is causing more critical illness per capita than the flu, even if only because it’s condensed into a shorter time frame than the flu season. I’m not saying that the true denominator here is 6000 cases. Sent from my Pixel 4 XL using Tapatalk ---
**Author:** ![Aspidistra](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/aspidistra/32/3894_2.png) [@Aspidistra](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Aspidistra)\ **Post date:** [March 8, 2020, 9:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-concerned-are-you-about-this-coronavirus/847164/531 "2020-03-08T21:28:25Z")
> [@ftg](#): > > Unless, of course, you want to talk about real flu: the Spanish one of a century ago. A death rate comparble to that one means ~200 million dead. And there’s a lot more people more densely packed now. Looking at the numbers, I don’t think it does. Estimates for the deaths from Spanish Flu are frankly all over the place - I’ve seen 17million, 50 million and 100 million put forward as possible numbers so there’s a high degree of guesswork there. But looking at some countries for which we have accurate data… [Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spanish_flu) has a short list, so lets use that: Canada, 50,000 (1919 pop 8.8 million, 0.6 percent dead) Brazil, 300,000 (1919 pop ~18 million, 1.7 percent dead) Britain, 250,000 (1919 pop 43 million, 0.6 percent dead) France,400,000 (1919 pop 39 million, 1 percent dead) Ghana, 100,000 (1919 pop probably around 7.5-15 million, 0.7 - 1.4 percent dead) If you take a highish estimate of average per-country death numbers (say 1.5% which is pretty damn huge) and multiply it by the population at the time of 1.8 billion, you get 27 million deaths - which is a shit-ton of people, but nowhere near the top-end estimate of 100 million. If the number was anything like 100 million it must be from deaths in countries where statistics were not easily kept, and people must have been dropping like flies there. I myself am dubious, and think 100 million came out of someone’s ass But I don’t think there’s anywhere today that’s less technologically developed, and has less medical infrastructure than developed countries like Britain and Canada _in 1919_. I think their death rates are a pretty good proxy for “what if a Spanish Flu equivalent came again right now?” in the developing world (and note that 0.6% total death rate with around 30% infection rates is equivalent to a case fatality rate of 2% which is a high-end estimate for covid-19 right now). Off a world population of 7.7 billion, that’s 46 million deaths - still an absolute shit-ton of people, but also still erring on the side of high numbers since it assumes that on the whole the world now wouldn’t do any better than the top nations of 1919. Estimating from the other end … China’s had it for three months now, and had 3000 deaths, and it’s more or less under control - there are new cases, but not increasing exponentially. So if the epidemic lasted a year, that would be 12,000 deaths, in a country that’s 20% of the world population. If the world average was ten times higher than in China, that would be 600,000 people … no longer really a shit-ton in global terms. Even if the world in general did a HUNDRED times worse than China, still only 6 million. Nasty, but not world-shattering levels. ---
**Author:** ![Broomstick](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/broomstick/32/246_2.png) [@Broomstick](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Broomstick)\ **Post date:** [March 8, 2020, 9:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-concerned-are-you-about-this-coronavirus/847164/532 "2020-03-08T21:47:44Z")
> [@Mijin](#): > > Yes, I know, it’s China and therefore we can just ignore what they’re saying, handful of salt, yadda yadda. But then why are we using the number from Hubei? Because the president of my country is fucking moron who thinks he can solve this by simply not testing people to keep the numbers low so he can get re-elected. Said buffoon also can’t figure out why the stock market continues to sink. He isn’t going to admit there’s a problem until he himself gets sick, and maybe not even then. Which is going to make mounting an effective response in the US difficult and is going to result in deaths that might have otherwise been prevented. ---
**Author:** ![DSeid](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dseid/32/20194_2.png) [@DSeid](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DSeid)\ **Post date:** [March 8, 2020, 11:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-concerned-are-you-about-this-coronavirus/847164/533 "2020-03-08T23:27:52Z")
> [@Shmendrik](#): > > The 400 deaths are concentrated in a region containing about a quarter of Italy’s population, at most. And I think most of them are concentrated among a significantly smaller population than that. Obviously the repurposing of other areas in the hospital as makeshift ICU beds shows that this is causing more critical illness per capita than the flu, even if only because it’s condensed into a shorter time frame than the flu season. > > I’m not saying that the true denominator here is 6000 cases. > > Sent from my Pixel 4 XL using Tapatalk 1. The same region that has been hit hardest in influenza seasons there. But sure, divide the country’s influenza deaths by four. Each region’s hospitals can handle influenza illness equal to over 6000 deaths in a season, generally concentrated in a two to three month period. 2. The problem they may be facing though is that this influenza season has been another fairly bad one there and is not far off its peak yet. It’s true that the glass may already have been near full. Adding even a mild influenza-level event to a moderately bad influenza season still in progress is challenging and, well, bad. 3. Yes, I read like this below and understand how the virus is something special: > [@](#): > > … several hospitals have set up large “surge tents” outside their emergency departments to accommodate and treat … Hospital has opened its emergency overflow wing, as well as all outpatient centers and surgical holding centers, to make more beds available to patients who need them. Nurses are being “pulled from all floors to care for them,” says registered nurse Jennifer Braciszewski, and are being offered an increased hourly rate to work above and beyond their normal schedules. Many nurses have also become sick, however, so the staff is also short-handed. … More and more patients are needing mechanical ventilation due to respiratory failure … Of course that was all [in the United States for the 2017-18 influenza season.](https://time.com/5107984/hospitals-handling-burden-flu-patients/) The above is why I very much want to emphasize that saying this may be an influenza-level event is NOT saying that it is “just” anything. If it is an influenza-level event overlapping an already fairly bad influenza season? Oh boy. To my read one of the worst case scenarios would be that this abates over summer, spreading gradually but widely and sub-clinically, and then picked up steam with the same dynamics as influenza does, with a moderate influenza impact (let alone worse), in the Fall/early Winter. Better to have it continue into summer, hitting when systems have capacities to deal with the load. IF it abates over summer then preventing a bad flu season with a very effective vaccination program is ESSENTIAL. ---
**Author:** ![DSeid](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dseid/32/20194_2.png) [@DSeid](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DSeid)\ **Post date:** [March 9, 2020, 12:05am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-concerned-are-you-about-this-coronavirus/847164/534 "2020-03-09T00:05:05Z")
One other item. The population of Iran is over 81,000,000. 8% of their parliament has tested positive for it. 23 individuals. 8% of the population of Iran would be nearly 6.5 M cases. There are so far 6566 cases identified. Hmmm. ---
**Author:** ![MandaJo](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/ac91a4/32.png) [@MandaJo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MandaJo)\ **Post date:** [March 9, 2020, 12:31am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-concerned-are-you-about-this-coronavirus/847164/535 "2020-03-09T00:31:17Z")
In the last few days, pretty much every private school has cancelled their admitted student weekends, annual events where they fly prospective students in from all over the world to see if they’d like to go. Did, do you think those cancellations are an over reaction? I wasn’t really THAT worried until they did that. ---
**Author:** ![Bijou\_Drains](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bijou_drains/32/2814_2.png) [@Bijou\_Drains](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bijou_Drains)\ **Post date:** [March 9, 2020, 12:58am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-concerned-are-you-about-this-coronavirus/847164/536 "2020-03-09T00:58:39Z")
Sen. Ted Cruz shook hands with the guy at CPAC last week who was diagnosed with the virus. Cruz says he has no symptoms but is staying at home in TX for 2 weeks. ---
**Author:** ![MandaJo](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/ac91a4/32.png) [@MandaJo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MandaJo)\ **Post date:** [March 9, 2020, 1:07am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-concerned-are-you-about-this-coronavirus/847164/537 "2020-03-09T01:07:32Z")
It’s been ten days already. He’s staying home for 4. ---
**Author:** ![Aspidistra](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/aspidistra/32/3894_2.png) [@Aspidistra](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Aspidistra)\ **Post date:** [March 9, 2020, 1:35am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-concerned-are-you-about-this-coronavirus/847164/538 "2020-03-09T01:35:46Z")
You’d think he’d just get tested. Or aren’t there enough test kits for that? ---
**Author:** ![monstro](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/ba9def/32.png) [@monstro](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/monstro)\ **Post date:** [March 9, 2020, 1:37am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-concerned-are-you-about-this-coronavirus/847164/539 "2020-03-09T01:37:50Z")
**Manda JO’s** post made me wonder what event or moment will indicate for me that “shit is getting real”. I haven’t reached that moment yet. Everything seems pretty normal in my day-to-day life except for the emails at work telling us to get prepared for telecommuting. So I guess if my employer actually commands us to work from home, that will be when it will hit home for me. I don’t think I will go into panic mode. But it will be unsettling. Apart from feeling anxious about getting sick, I know I am not going to be very productive working from home–having never done it before for long periods of time. And secondly, it will be very strange being cut-off from the people I see every day and not knowing what’s happening to them. If we’re talking about weeks in isolation, then it is possible one or two of my coworkers will become critically ill over that time. It’s hard to imagine this happening, and yet it very well could. I think if Japan cancels the Olympics a lot of people will panic. Shit will have suddenly gotten real for them. So I’m waiting to see what happens with that. ---
**Author:** ![Shmendrik](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ee7513/32.png) [@Shmendrik](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Shmendrik)\ **Post date:** [March 9, 2020, 1:54am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-concerned-are-you-about-this-coronavirus/847164/540 "2020-03-09T01:54:32Z")
> [@Aspidistra](#): > > You’d think he’d just get tested. Or aren’t there enough test kits for that? Tests aren’t reliable during the incubation period. ---
**Author:** ![Fretful\_Porpentine](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/fretful_porpentine/32/2873_2.png) [@Fretful\_Porpentine](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Fretful_Porpentine)\ **Post date:** [March 9, 2020, 1:59am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-concerned-are-you-about-this-coronavirus/847164/541 "2020-03-09T01:59:33Z")
> [@Bijou\_Drains](#): > > Sen. Ted Cruz shook hands with the guy at CPAC last week who was diagnosed with the virus. Cruz says he has no symptoms but is staying at home in TX for 2 weeks. Paul Gosar, too, apparently. I gotta say, anything that keeps them out of Congress for a week or two can’t be _all_ bad. ---
**Author:** ![jtur88](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/e9c0ed/32.png) [@jtur88](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jtur88)\ **Post date:** [March 9, 2020, 2:35am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-concerned-are-you-about-this-coronavirus/847164/542 "2020-03-09T02:35:19Z")
This morning, on the Reuters US news headline lineup, the top 37 stories all had “virus” or “coronavirus” in the headline. Story #38 was about Weinstein. In the World summary, onlu two of the top eight stories were about the virus. ---
**Author:** ![Aspidistra](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/aspidistra/32/3894_2.png) [@Aspidistra](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Aspidistra)\ **Post date:** [March 9, 2020, 2:50am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-concerned-are-you-about-this-coronavirus/847164/543 "2020-03-09T02:50:39Z")
> [@Shmendrik](#): > > Tests aren’t reliable during the incubation period. Ok, that makes sense. I know some friends who went through the self-isolation-while-waiting-for-test-results last week (they didn’t have it). In their case they already had the sniffles (after being in Japan) so obviously that’s the distinction. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-concerned-are-you-about-this-coronavirus/847164.md?page=26) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-concerned-are-you-about-this-coronavirus/847164.md?page=28)