It’s at least one magnitude more lethal than Flu.
There is zero population immunity to this (unlike like the Flu), meaning that as many as 50-70% of the population could catch it.
That’s 50m people.
If it’s lethality lowers to only 1% of those infected (WHO currently still saying 3.4 although we hope and expect that to drop with time) then that means 500,000 dead. Or 10 lots of the Etihad to look at it another way.
Even if you take fatalities out of the equation, 15-20% also require hospital treatment meaning 10-15m could end up in a hospital with it (if left unchecked without measures taken to reduce the contagion spread). If that happened in a short space of time then the NHS would be crippled and many others could die as a result.
Out of morbid curiosity, what made you think it’s only as bad as normal flu?
Thanks for replying.
I guess I'm a victim of the way this is being reported; I honestly feel that the media can be condescending to the public in many situations as - despite having Radio 4 and Radio 5 on for a decent part of the day, every day - I've heard little in terms of actual statistical information that gives true clarity on the rationale behind our collective response to the virus. I do, however, appreciate that we are in uncharted territory so the evidence will be full of holes at this stage.
My reasons for thinking is no worse than flu have come from some of the stats that I've looked up, such as this from the
Full Fact fact-checking website:
https://fullfact.org/health/coronavirus-compare-influenza/
"These figures suggest that over the past decade in the United States, the percentage of flu cases that resulted in hospitalisation has consistently been between 1% and 2%, and the percentage of cases that resulted in death has been between 0.1% and 0.2%."
However, it does also state that, "...current evidence on the new coronavirus suggests 15% of all illnesses are severe infections, requiring oxygen, and 5% are critical infections requiring ventilation. These levels are “higher than what is observed for influenza infection”."
Having read a bit more, it does look like there are early stats which agree with your premise, i.e.:
Mortality rates also appear to be higher for the new coronavirus, although the WHO does warn that the “true mortality of Covid-19 will take some time to fully understand”. Based on current data, the crude mortality rate (the number of reported deaths divided by the reported cases) is between 3-4%—although the actual rate, when including mild cases where people do not get diagnosed, is likely to be lower. Globally, for seasonal influenza, the WHO estimates the mortality rate is usually below 0.1%.
This is basically the info I've been looking for, so this conversation has been useful in prompting me to delve a bit deeper. Surely, though, with everything in the media recently, these simple stats should be presented more clearly? [/Anti-media rant]
