I work a lot with China. The CCP is not exactly a group that is sensitive to people's "feelings". CCP also downplayed the virus in it's early stages. I knew it was serious when I saw what China did over 2 months ago. They not only shut down the City of Wuhan, they shut down the entire Hubei province.Vonz90 wrote: ↑Sat Mar 21, 2020 2:38 pm
I am not saying this is not serious, but one can over react to serious things as well. There is a cost to what we are doing, a cost that was also include lives. Many of the things we are doing are good and worthwhile, while others have tremendous cost for marginal benefit. BTW, some of those costs will also end up in people being dead.
There is no reason to ever NOT do a cost/benefit analysis. The more serious the situation, the more important it is.
Also, keep in mind that point of all of this isolation is to "flatten the curve", but the area under the curve stays the same, in other words the same number of people will get it either way. There is value in doing that, but it is not infinitely valuable.
To put this in perspective, Wuhan is called "The Chicago of China". Hubei, together with Hunan, are the agricultural and industrial heartland of China and Wuhan is the biggest city in that heartland. Chinese provinces are much larger than US States. Think of the US shutting down Chicago along with the entirety of Illinois, Indiana, Michigan and Wisconsin.
I am certain someone in the CCP did a "cost/benefit" analysis with data that they were not sharing. The numbers that were being published did not match the "cost" that was being self-inflicted on China. This told me 2 months ago that COVID-19 is a lot more serious than the CCP was letting-on, and anyone in the western media was taking it. I told many of my friends to plan accordingly. Did anyone take my advice? Crickets...
Regarding "flatten the curve", a quick run through of the numbers:
1. R is about 4 to 6, and is communicable with asymptomatic carriers (one person infects 4 to 6 others)
2. Recovery time is about 4 weeks (not 3 days in hospital bed)
3. Mortality rate is probably going to be about 1% once all the data is in
4. Persistence on surfaces is about 4 days
5. May be airborne
For comparison:
1. R of regular flu is about 1, and requires symptoms (1 person infects 1 other person on average, doesn't spread as fast)
2. Recovery time is about 1 to 2 weeks
3. Mortality rate is less than 0.1%
4. Persistence on surfaces is less than 1 day
5. Airborne
This is not regular flu and not SARS and not MERS. SARS had a mortality rate of 10%, but was only communicable with symptomatic carriers, so had a much lower R number. MERS had a mortality rate of 30%, but you could only get it from camels, it wasn't human-to-human communicable (R was effectively 0 unless you ride camels).
Mortality rates of 2% to 4% are being thrown around based on data coming out of affected countries, however, I think this is due to under-counting of actual infected people. Countries like Korea which is testing everyone is coming up with many people who are infected, but have mild or no symptoms, so their infection rate looks higher and their mortality rate looks lower, about 1%. Many countries that are not testing are showing higher mortality rates because only those who show up with serious symptoms at hospital are tested.
However, this is the problem. US has fewer hospital beds per person than China, and China has fewer hospital beds per person than Korea. Korea was able to bring this under control with fewer restrictions because their medical system hasn't been overwhelmed. China had to shut down.
Yes, everyone will eventually get this. Maybe you will die (maybe as high as 1%). However, if we overwhelm the medical system, that mortality rate will be much higher - maybe 5%, maybe more. People who may have recovered with some medical care won't get it, and will die. If you can delay when you get this, maybe better.
Why is "flattening the curve" so important? To smooth the flow of patients into our hospital system. Imagine being taken to the medical tent on Omaha Beach on D-Day with a gunshot wound to the torso; some medic will put a tag on your toe, give you some morphine, and let you die. If you get a gunshot wound to the torso on a Saturday night in Chicago, you have a pretty good chance of survival because even in Chicago, only 3 or 4 gunshot wounds show up at a major hospital ER on a Saturday night. Yes, total number of people shot in Chicago over the past century probably adds up to Omaha Beach, but that was over a century vs. a day. That's what it means to "flatten the curve."