Nationals and Coronavirus.

Michael Heather - none of the other pandemics are currently increasing at 15% per day. Not even 1. I don't think that even a single one of those historical pandemics spread that fast even at their prime. Not even the plague that killed a third of Europe. It's widely acknowledged that the 3.4% mortality rate is an artifact of under-IDing cases. Still it's likely that this will be far more fatal than the flu. COVID19 is still in the early part of the exponential stage - it's too early to tell whether total US deaths will get up the 7 figures or not. The latest figures from China are very encouraging - but I don't believe them. I don't believe China went from 5,000 new cases a day to under 20 a day in a week or so. I roll my eyes at the idea that most of China's new cases are foreign-originated. But *IF* the Chinese are telling the truth on this, COVID could pass in a couple of months with a few thousand fatalities. It's possible that some existing drugs, such as remdesimir, chloroquine, or some cocktail of other drugs, will prove effective on COVID. But maybe not Cuomo, in New York, is being realistic when he says it's likely that the 100,000 or so ventilators in the country will be an inadequate number. Any thing to slow down the virus RIGHT NOW will help enormously with that. Even if the eventual numbers of people needing respirators is the same, if we can spread the peak out, we can reduce fatalities. If we can delay the peak by days, weeks, months the chances of effective treatment goes up. We can expect other emerging diseases to occur - and some worse than Covid. So even if we look back on this as some kind of hysteria (unlikely, I think), the knowledge we gain from trying to stop this is well worthwhile.

Michael Heather - none of the other pandemics are currently increasing at 15% per day. Not even 1. I don't think that even a single one of those historical pandemics spread that fast even at their prime. Not even the plague that killed a third of Europe. It's widely acknowledged that the 3.4% mortality rate is an artifact of under-IDing cases. Still it's likely that this will be far more fatal than the flu. COVID19 is still in the early part of the exponential stage - it's too early to tell whether total US deaths will get up the 7 figures or not. The latest figures from China are very encouraging - but I don't believe them. I don't believe China went from 5,000 new cases a day to under 20 a day in a week or so. I roll my eyes at the idea that most of China's new cases are foreign-originated. But *IF* the Chinese are telling the truth on this, COVID could pass in a couple of months with a few thousand fatalities. It's possible that some existing drugs, such as remdesimir, chloroquine, or some cocktail of other drugs, will prove effective on COVID. But maybe not Cuomo, in New York, is being realistic when he says it's likely that the 100,000 or so ventilators in the country will be an inadequate number. Any thing to slow down the virus RIGHT NOW will help enormously with that. Even if the eventual numbers of people needing respirators is the same, if we can spread the peak out, we can reduce fatalities. If we can delay the peak by days, weeks, months the chances of effective treatment goes up. We can expect other emerging diseases to occur - and some worse than Covid. So even if we look back on this as some kind of hysteria (unlikely, I think), the knowledge we gain from trying to stop this is well worthwhile.