Are we overreacting to coronavirus?

Early last week, one of the hospitals near me (NYC) had zero confirmed cases but a couple of people who were exhibiting Covid-like symptoms bad enough they required hospitalization.

On Thursday of last week, this hospital had their first several confirmed positive cases. Keep in mind that in the early days of this, the criteria for testing in the US has been "you are already very sick and you require hospitalization for something with similar symptoms"

On Tuesday of this week, as tests became more available, that hospital had ~20 suspected and confirmed cases.

On Wednesday they were at 22 confirmed cases and 22 suspected cases where people are sick enough to require hospitalization but test results haven't come back yet.

Last week, the hospital was dealing with normal load and on standby should this become a problem. In the space of a little over a week, they now have a floor devoted to patients who are a) sick enough to require hospitalization and b) have tested positive and another floor devoted to patients who are a) sick enough to require hospitalization and b) are presumed to have this based on symptoms presented, pending test results.

It's just one facility, but I personally cannot look at a single hospital that had zero known cases last week, which now has two floors devoted to active cases this week and comfort myself with, "It's fine, this is just the flu."

I'm from Spain, one of the most exposed countries right now. At first you see this as something distant, something that was happening in China as Ebola was happening years ago on Africa.

It can't touch me.

A few days ago the state of alarm began over here. Remain at home, minimal movement (just to go for groceries, pharma, the rest of retail businesses are closed now). It felt closer, but still you feel safe. You're at home, theoretically isolated.

And then you start hearing that people near you got sick and even die. One friend's father died a couple days ago. Other relative has been confirmed with covid-19 yesterday. More cases coming everyday. They are no longer points in a chart. These are your people.

We are not overreacting. We reacted late.

Take care.

No. Very simply, an extreme response is required here. The most recent UCL study demonstrates that given everything we know about the virus, extreme social distancing may not even be enough [1]. Worse, if we are successful, it will look like we overreacted because the nature of exponential spread is that if you act when you’re on the steep part of the curve you’re too late. If you act beforehand, you never get to the steep part.

The test, while developed quickly, isn’t likely showing lots of false positives. The nature of these tests is that they’re not too hard to quality control. You know what they’re looking for (a particular set of RNA sequences) so positive and negative controls are easy to make. In fact that’s why the CDC test was rejected initially, there was a clear issue with the controls.

For hospital beds, people don’t just randomly end up in the ICU. Italian ICU capacity is completely overwhelmed, if not this virus, why?

That said, hoarding groceries is counterproductive and an overreaction. Otherwise, absolutely not, this is a terrible virus, we need to be careful.

[1] https://www.imperial.ac.uk/mrc-global-infectious-disease-ana...

EDIT: Typo

Regarding your question about if we might accidentally test for flu or other, already existing corona virii:

This was a topic of discussion in yesterday's talk [1] with Dr. Drosten, a virologist who played an important part in the development of the currently used PCR test. He said that there were extensive studies done with hundreds of samples from both flu patients and patients infected with other corona virii and none returned a positive result. The only other positive results were from corona virii that are special to certain animals (bats, some cows IIRC), but none of those are present in humans. So the accuracy of our current PCR test for SARS-CoV-2 seems to be extremely high.

[1] (transcript in German) https://www.ndr.de/nachrichten/info/16-Coronavirus-Update-Wi...

Here's a quick (and slightly condensed) translation of the relevant parts: "There was a big validation study [for the PCR test]. We tested with a big number of patient samples from patients with flu/cold diseases and other corona viruses. Not once did we get a false positive. [...] It is true though that [the current PCR test] would yield positive results against the old SARS corona virus, but that hasn't been confirmed in a human for 16 years. And theoretically, the test would give a positive result on some bat corona viruses, but they do not affect humans."

Well, so far judging by deaths / cases on plague.com, we're looking at 4% fatality rate. The average seasonal flu fatality rate is 0.1%. The mortality rate for H1N1 was 0.02%. For Ebola, the average mortality rate is around 50%.

China severely restricted travel and managed to keep the infection rate around 0.008% of their population. We're still in the early stages in the US, with about 0.00269% of the population infected.

In the US, about 8% of the population gets the seasonal flu every year on average. That's about 28 million people. Take 4% of that 28 million people and we'd be looking at 1.12 million people dying from the flu every year if it had the same 4% mortality rate that Covid19 has.

So sheltering in place to limit transmission and keep the number of cases low could save many, many lives.

None of the above estimates take into account the risk we run of running out of hospital beds and ventilators. That would increase the mortality rate.

Depends on which "we":

The members of my community that got into a brawl over toilet paper at Costco: Yes

The members of my family who have been sending funny videos of each other because we're all stuck at home with kids: No

The members of my local gaming group that make sure to wipe down the table and wash our hands before we play: No

...

Basically, I think it is a mixed bag. Yes, we should be cautious and mindful. I agree that we don't usually put things in their proper perspective when assessing threats.

Yes. The biggest issue is that we lack any idea regarding how infected the population currently is, or was. We don't know if 25% of all Americans have had a minor infection at this point and are less vulnerable. We don't know how it hung around Washington State undetected for six weeks.

On the one hand, when dealing with the risks associated with a pandemic it is wise to error on the side of caution, but as we go through this we learn more and more how little we knew when we launched this panic campaign.

Until we have a reasonable sampling the entire population, claiming this is the doomsday virus is incredibly dangerous. Shutting down the economy is incredibly dangerous considering our lack of knowledge about this virus.

Incomplete information has spread like absolute wildfire on the internet, and closures and overreactions fell like dominos as worst case scenarios were leaked without context. It is maddening

It depends - if we think nothing is off the table - including isolating older people or doing war-time like strategies, then maybe we are overreacting.

But if the only cases we consider are traditionnal approaches - confinment vs doing basically nothing, then the short answer must be no - if anything, we are underreacting (by we, I assume you mean the West - EU and US).

I've tried to be smart about the numbers, which are definitely not rock solid now, but just look at what happened in places that tried to underreact - Wuhan (not their fault), Lombardy. Have you ever seen military trucks coming into a city, during peace time, to move coffins out ? Here you go: https://twitter.com/guidosalva/status/1240555847849312256?s=...

We can argue as long as we want about age structure etc, but this kind of horror, definitely never happens unless there is something extremely unusual (and deadly) happening.

It's a problem that seems to be a lot like climate change:

It will be hard to objectively tell if we overreacted, because the actions taken cause a lower impact than predicted.

But on the other hand, it will be pretty easy to tell if we underreacted: a catastrophe worse than projected would mean we didn't take enough action.

It's so easy to be skeptical when the data is inconsistent - but it's important to be open to new information and work to protect your community to the best of your knowledge and ability.

Overall I would have to say absolutely, yes. The number of infections doesn't justify this level of panic, let alone the number of deaths. I realise there is an element of "prevention" here, but far, far more people die of very common things (flu, traffic accidents, smoking-related conditions, being overweight, etc.) in the US alone every year, some of which are also 100% preventable, than have died worldwide of coronavirus. Do we shut down borders because of a flu outbreak? No, it's just expected. The same can be said for any of the dozens of leading causes of death that exist in poverty-stricken countries where things like water contamination causing diarrhea kill more people than we could possibly imagine dying in the US.

I'm not saying that there haven't been some good things to come out of this situation - people working from home and thereby saving gas, limiting pollution, etc.; increased awareness of basic cleanliness practices, particularly in some countries that are quite noticeably less fastidious than the US generally is; actual tests of some of our response mechanisms (I mean, you don't trust your backups unless you've used them...) - but the extraordinary response of basically shutting down Europe is so far and away over the top...

I don't pretend to understand _why_ people have freaked out like this, but I suspect it's pretty much in line with why they freak out about anything: they've been programmed to wait for the "next big thing" that is going to kill us all by news, TV, movies; the news has, as usual, plastered everything across the "front page" on a constant basis, essentially "hyping" it up; and probably that on some deep psychological level we've all gotten a little overwhelmed with technological advances and how quickly the world has become a global market that is "always on", so we were unintentionally waiting for some way to pull back and deal with ourselves for a while.

I can only speak from 'our' perspective here in Sweden so don't shoot if you don't agree but... in general I think people under-react rather than over-react when it comes to handling the oncoming epidemic. The main problem is that the disease is already causing an overload on the health care system in parts of the country while the epidemic has just gotten started. If left unchecked it will peak in about 2.5 months when close to half a million people will likely be in need of hospitalisation with about 150.000 of them in need of critical care. About 40.000 people will die given a mortality of 0.7% (as measured in Korea) and a 70% fraction of the population being infected.

There are 520 IC places in the whole of Sweden.

Even if these numbers are overstated by a factor 10 - which is possible although the SEIR-model gives even higher numbers (800.000 hospitalised, 200.000 in need of critical care) - it is clear that those in need of critical care will most likely not get the help they need leading to an increased mortality.

For a single individual the disease does not seem to be as large a threat as it is being made out to be by some. For a society unused to see people die from infectious disease it stands to be devastating. Either society will have to accept that infectious disease can and will kill people when it is allowed free reign or we'll have to do our best to make sure the limit the amount of suffering due to loss of life, loss of quality of life, loss of income, employment, economic potential and other factors as much as possible.

What is needed now is a comprehensive testing effort to find out how far the infection has spread over the country. If it turns out a sizeable part of the population already carries antibodies against SARS-CoV2 it will be clear that the disease is not as much of a threat as it seems to be. Comprehensive testing will also allow for the early isolation of infected people and will help in limiting the load on the health care system.

I don't have the background to answer your questions, but even if I steelman and assume the worst outcome here (issues with the test, issues with epidemiology, that we're crowding out hospitals, that we're infecting via hospitals), I would argue that we are still not overreacting:

In the original outbreak of wuhan, there could not have been overpreparation because there was no preparation, the outbreak simply happened. So, we should look at wuhan pre-citywide-quarantine to get a feel for what it would look like if we chose to not "overreact", as originally there was no real "test" being administered, cases were diagnosed by CT scans of lungs for pneumonia, and there were not extreme imposed social distancing or population-wide quarantine.

So, any issues we might have in the west, should not apply to the original outbreak in wuhan. And in wuhan the casualties of the outbreak were on the order of 1-5% (i think estimates varied a lot for some of the reasons you list). In any case, it overloaded hospitals and a lot of people died.

If the infection reaches a broader population (the 'underreaction' scenario), it suffices to say the death rate will be a MINIMUM of 1-5%, as obviously the situation would be even worse with a large percentage of the population sick. This would continue until the population reaches herd immunity, estimated 30-60% of population infected.

Thus, we can conclude 1-5% of that 30-60% of the infected population would die, which in america ranges from about 1 million to nearly 10 million deaths. This is far far far greater than the yearly flu outbreak. And that's assuming that the rapid spread of the disease doesn't cause secondary effects through deteriorating supply chains (who staffs grocery stores if 60% of the population is home? who drives trucks to keep supply chains going? who works the amazon fulfillment center?)

Thus, I would conclude that the penalties for unabated spread of the disease are so horrific that the only reasonable response is something that looks like an overreaction: extreme social distancing, shutting down cities aside from vital functions, etc.

Because atleast our groceries stores operate and our supply chains are running.

I’m not really sure if we’re overreacting. But it sure seems like we are entering this endeavor completely without a plan. We’re not going to be able to stockpile food and furlough half the economy forever, and as soon as we start coming out of hibernation, spread will just ramp right back up again.

I think the lack of leadership and foresight will likely cause thousands to lose their lives and trillions in economic damage.

>Are the flu deaths increasing because of the coronavirus?

In Japan influenza rates went way down because of the threat of coronavirus. [1] It might actually save lives assuming it's contained at some point.

[1] https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2020/02/21/national/influe...

1. In the US, we test twice, and only with two positives do we say a person is confirmed to have COVID-19. Before that, we say "probable COVID-19." So is it used correctly everywhere? Impossible to say. In the US, yes it is.

2. In Korea, yes. In the US, no. Other places, mostly no.

3. Unlikely. We have a bigger issue with people not going to hospitals, and therefore spreading the disease. Korea went from 30 cases to 8000 cases because of one such person. [0]

4. More likely is that flu deaths will decrease because people are taking precautions that they normally do not. We should take flu much more seriously than we do, and the same precautions we take against COVID-19 are effective against flu.

Overall, you seem to be focused on hospitals, but here in the US, that's just not something people rush to, due to expense. Here in the US, at least, we are not overreacting. It may not be possible to overreact! What I mean is: If we have exactly the right level of reaction, it will look like overreaction in hindsight, so we can't even know whether we overreacted.

[0] https://graphics.reuters.com/CHINA-HEALTH-SOUTHKOREA-CLUSTER...

Says

"Note that I don't subscribe to conspiracy theories so I will focus only on non-political information."

Spreads youtube Video of a guy who didn't even realize that he made an impostor his second in command leading a public health office in Germany.

Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gert_Postel

Article: Why Wolfgang Wodarg's Statements have little to do with science. By a well respected fact checking and investigative journalism group.

https://correctiv.org/faktencheck/hintergrund/2020/03/18/cor... ( Translate with Google Translate )

OP is a great example of how a disinformation campaign by conspiracy theorists works. They make you believe they have credible sources you can rely on they base their arguments on until you start digging and find out the stuff above and that this is the same guy who voted against a Child Predator law in Germany and is heavily politically and financially involved in spreading the bullshit he does.

I mean, some people are overreacting about some aspects of this, but the main thing is:

- the fatality rate for covid is high. People make a valid point about how we don’t know the “actual” (unbiased) fatality rate, that may be hard to estimate, but at this point it’s more or less irrelevant —- we already know for a fact that it is high enough to overwhelm the healthcare system, as is already happening elsewhere. We’re not going to wake up one day and say “oh oops, the fatality rate is only 0.03%, oopsies sorry everyone go back to work”, it’s already past that point.

- because it will overwhelm our healthcare system, countries have no choice but to impose extreme measures to slow the spread, which will have huge economic effects depending on how long we can stand doing this. Ideally until there is a solution to the problem of inundated hospitals, whatever that looks like, and however long that takes.

- people hoarding resources or thinking this is the apocalypse are likely overreacting. People are panicking, which will slowly stop once people adjust to their new temporary reality, but whether people are “overreacting” has a different answer for every person.

- the impact on the economy is going to be severe, even with trillions of dollars in stimulus. The restaurant/entertainment industries are trillions of dollars in size, so this will hurt (it is already hurting) and it will put many people out of business.

So....it depends on exactly what you mean by overreacting. If people who are really ok are filling hospital beds, then once things get bad they will be sidelined in favor of serious cases. So for now I don’t see how that’s an issue but maybe it is?

In summary: panic is usually the wrong response to anything but this is incredibly serious...

The answer to your question is almost certainly, "yes". Any look at the grocery stores will confirm this.

Unfortunately, exactly in which ways we are overreacting, is trickier. It is possible for us to be overreacting, but Covid-19 still to be a serious problem.

One could also argue that, since we lose 25-60,000 people a year to flu in the U.S. alone, we were underreacting before. If we lost 25,000 people to a new threat, we would consider that appalling. It may be that we are overreacting to this because it's a new threat, but perhaps we were underreacting before?

Probably, it is some of both.

Nobody is immune to this from before. Everyone might contract this at the same time.

We don't know exactly what this is, or what it may become. The infection rates are much higher than flu.

Most countries aren't as prepared as some Asian countries that've had to deal with such situations before.

After short time with exponential spread, countries will shut down anyway, and then it's too late to avoid becoming Italy.

It's prudent to stop or slow this down, until we've had time to prepare and learn more about the disease.

Nobody knows anything for sure in this situation.

We should've already prepared for this eventuality anyway.

Italy has a much better healthcare system than the US, and they had about 500 people die today. The US is going to be really hit hard.

I've read some of the literature on modeling the outbreak. In 45 days, the US will have no ICU beds available, basically no emergency healthcare available as it will be completely overwhelmed, and anywhere from 1-10 million will die over the successive pandemic waves within the next 18-24 months. Vaccine/s, prophylaxes and treatment protocols, in large numbers, are essential.

One of the largest dangers will be the premature reopening and lifting of shelter orders because the virus will not magically go away, and then people will abandon sensible precautions and cause a new pandemic wave that will kill untold thousands. Complacency and irresponsibility will kill many people.

Also, the Spring Break kids and the governor in Florida are beyond ignorant, they're reckless, selfish and liabilities to everyone else. One coastal Florida county's health department wasn't testing ILI patients to avoid coronavirus statistics, and preventing doctors from testing patients.

This isn't something to underestimate, because to do so would gamble your and your family's lives. Furthermore, young people are by far the greatest spreaders and also at risk for developing critical symptoms.

There is no black or white answer to this. It depends mostly on the number of deaths a given government is OK to tolerate. It seems China, South Korea & European countries decided to have the least possible deaths.

Now what would be the number of fatalities if we'd let things go? For the reasons you mentioned the fatality rate is very hard to even estimate.

Italy had 4000 deaths due to Covid-19 in 4 weeks which is bad enough. As a comparison France had 8100 death due to flu during the 2018-19 winter, and 30000 deaths in 2 weeks due to a heat wave in 2003. Would the Covid-19 overrun those figures with no containment measures. My estimation is that it would.

For Germany: it turns out the virus has currently spread between younger people, explaining the low number of fatality for now. Maybe there are more cautious as well.

I've found this thread useful in trying to answer this very question:

https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1239975682643357696.html

Can somebody with field expertise explain this to me:

The mortality rate is said to be between 3 and 5%. Experts are also saying that it does not draw an accurate picture of the situation because people aren't being tested nearly as much as should be required.

So the question then becomes, why aren't we ramping up tests among the general population to get a better idea of who to prioritise ? Surely if we know who needs urgent treatment and who doesn't we don't have to freeze the whole economy and put everyone in lockdown ?

What am I missing ? Am I being too naive ?

it's a bad model to think of measures responding to covid as scalars. they have magnitude and direction.

everything below is me spitballing -- weakly held:

my thinking is that we should err on the side of caution, which means that if anything, in terms of flattening the curve, we haven't done enough, yet, but there is also that any it takes ~1-2 weeks to see the effects of any one action. once the curve is flattening, i think we ought to relax on this front as to minimize the economic damage.

in terms of structural changes to medical system (think FDA approvals), i think that we're also under-reacting, but i don't know enough to really say.

in terms of stimulating the economy, i think we've also under-reacted so far, though the latest bills look a bit promising on this front and i think if they pass they are of about the right magnitude.

Currently CFR for 20-44 year olds is less than 1%, but the troubling bit is up to 20% will need hospitalization, and what if the hospitals are full?

"A new CDC analysis of more than 2,400 cases of COVID-19 that have occurred in the United States in the last month shows that between 1 in 7 and 1 in 5 people between the ages of 20 and 44 in the sample of those who are confirmed cases require hospitalization"

https://thehill.com/policy/healthcare/488325-cdc-data-show-c...

Epidemiology and virology are serious sciences. This stuff has been studied, and studies confirmed in the real world, for a very long time now. If those guys are worried, Imma gonna shelter in place and do my best to follow other recommendations. But that's only part of the real problem, which is that our modern society is a house of cards that depends on every part working well, and even then it breaks down all the time. Whatcha gonna do when most parts break down? I guess we're going to find out. I don't think it will be full-on Mad Max (or rather I hope not). But wishful thinking ain't gonna cut it.

It will be hard to tell if we're overreacting if we respond correctly, I think. The exponential nature of it means being earlier is _much_ better with all countermeasures (social distancing, mass testing, vaccines) and any success that slows the rate of growth will make it seem many orders of magnitude smaller than it was. So if the US tops out at 20K deaths for Covid-19 it will look more like the flu in size, but in reality the smaller total was caused by the extraordinary measures being taken.

As for hospitals and increased infection rates, here in Seattle I've heard that people are calling ahead and arranging where to go. They are also waiting in their cars while being checked into hospitals so they don't even use public waiting areas. Pretty smart, and definitely not a panicked response!

What I find concerning is that in Germany at least one expert gets put into one basket with Conspiracy Theorists, who just says: "From looking at the numbers, we don't yet see anything out of the ordinary compared to other years." Although he's probably correct.

No. In the US alone more people may die from covid19 than from any other single event ever. Global deaths may exceed world war 2. For young healthy people, yes, things will be fine, but we are looking at millions dying well before their time.

In Italy death rates are 5x beyond normal. They are not even able to bury all the bodies at this time the mortality rate is so high.

Angela Merkel, who rarely gives speeches, has said this is the greatest challenge to Germany since the second world war. And Germany has been through a lot.

Look, even Donald Trump, who has every economic and political incentive to downplay this is calling this a catastrophe.

https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1239975682643357696.html

https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2020/03/angela-merkel-nails-...

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/mar/19/generation-has...

Have you seen the foto of the convoy of military trucks with corpses out of Bergamo, Italy?

I think if anything...we're under-reacting. Which is why we'er over-reacting now...trying to stop a dam AFTER it's blown to shreds, instead of stopping the bomb before it went off.

Well, with Madrid hospitals very near of collapsing and a death tool around 1000 persons, I think that I can say that we aren't overreacting.

Yes, absolutely.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=ohO8eAwi_po

Why is Italy’s curve not like South Korea? They under-reacted. We’ll know who under reacted based on the curves.

'If it looks like you're overreacting, you're probably doing the right thing.'

-Dr. Anthony Fauci

The thing about over-reacting is that you never think you are over-reacting.

Like anything as complex as a pandemic the answer is, it depends.

Are we overreacting? That depends on what your definition is on how to react to a pandemic. On one hand we don't freak out over influenza in the same way.

Let's look at it this way: Influenza('19-'20) has a projected hospitalization:death ratio between 3.2% and 15%[1].

hospitalizations: 370,000 – 670,000 deaths: 22,000 – 55,000

COVID-19: - As of March 16, a total of 4,226 COVID-19 cases had been reported in the United States - 508 (12%) patients known to have been hospitalized[2] - 108 (21%) deaths from COVID have occurred in the US[3]

This means about 21% of those who are hospitalized in the US have died from COVID.

It's not only significant, but significantly higher than influenza.

We should be reacting to this: social distancing, monitoring symptoms and avoiding the ER and visiting doctors unless we have an emergency.

Those are things everyone can work to do although there are some folks who can't distance themselves socially(doctors, firefighters, restaurant workers, etc) and it's important the rest of us do our best to support them.

Just like some folks are allergic to vaccines, it's critical those of us that are able to get vaccines to protect those with compromised immune systems or that are unable to get the vaccine.

In short: We're not overreacting, if anything the data shows we're underreacting.

[1] - https://www.cdc.gov/flu/about/burden/preliminary-in-season-e... [2] - https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/69/wr/mm6912e2.htm [3] - https://www.cbsnews.com/live-updates/coronavirus-disease-cov...

Does having more toilet paper than usual help during a virus outbreak? no. Are we overreacting? yes.

Why is this post flagged?

Wondered about such things and just looked into the subject.

In simple terms, here in the US, we only have a little data. E.g., apparently a big fraction of the data we have closely relevant to these questions is in a US CDC report

"Severe Outcomes Among Patients with Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) — United States, February 12–March 16, 2020"

that is, to essentially the present and only 4 days more than a month.

Can see the report with a lot of words with actual numerical values at

https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/69/wr/mm6912e2.htm

and, then, can see their graph of hospitalizations, ICU admissions, and deaths by age in Figure 2 at

https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/69/wr/mm6912e2.htm#F1_down

For how many people are infected, tough to know before we test a good simple random sample with a good test. From some of what Dr. Brix said recently, our test(s) "amplifies* the genetic code and sequences that.

If I understand correctly, the amplification is via the PCR where From Google,

"Polymerase chain reaction (PCR) is a method widely used in molecular biology to rapidly make millions to billions of copies of a specific DNA sample allowing scientists to take a very small sample of DNA and amplify it to a large enough amount to study in detail. PCR was invented in 1983 by Kary Mullis."

So, the test is not trivial, is some microbiology that, say, before 1983 would have seems impossible.

Next Dr. Brix has indicated that the US is very careful about the rates of false positives and false negatives of the tests they use.

Still, for now, apparently we don't know how many people in the US are (or have been) infected.

But from the CDC data above, we have some okay data (numbers are still small for accurate statistical estimates) by age of the fraction of hospital admissions with the virus that got into an ICU and then the fraction that died.

Considering the US population over 65, how big is that?

Uh, from Google search

"US population over 65"

get

"49.2 million

In the United States, the population age 65 and over numbered 49.2 million in 2016 (the most recent year for which data are available). They represented 15.2% of the population, about one in every seven Americans."

So, the US has to try hard to stop the spread of the virus or, ballpark, the US is looking at about 50 million citizens (a) nearly all of whom would get the virus and (b) a significant fraction of whom would die if they are like the people in the data who got the virus and were admitted to a hospital.

Net, bottom line, if extrapolate from that CDC data, then the US has to be careful or a lot of people over 65 could die:

In more detail, from the reference with the words,

"This first preliminary description of outcomes among patients with COVID-19 in the United States indicates that fatality was highest in persons aged =85, ranging from 10% to 27%, followed by 3% to 11% among persons aged 65–84 years, 1% to 3% among persons aged 55-64 years, <1% among persons aged 20–54 years, and no fatalities among persons aged =19 years."

Or, it could be > 3% dead of people over 65.

So, 3% dead of 50 million would be 1.5 million. If want to use the 10% number in the CDC text, then that would be 5 million dead.

So, hurry up step #1 is to slow the spread of the virus by a lot of social distancing and hand washing.

Hurry up step #2 is look for cures by (a) trying old drugs to see if any are effective against the virus, (b) get some antibodies from some people already cured from the virus and see if those antibodies can be the basis of a cure, (c) starting with the microbiology, e.g., the molecular geometry, of part of the virus, try to construct an antibody.

Step #3 -- ASAP get a safe and effective vaccine and give nearly everyone a shot.

In case #1 to #3 happen too slowly, do #4, get hospitals ready for lots more patients.

Unlike some other diseases, some good news about this virus is that everyone who gets the virus can transmit it for only a few weeks.

So, in simple terms, if the world would be 100% effective at social distancing for a few weeks, then the world would be free of the virus! And if the world is close to 100% effective, then the world will still be free of the virus soon!

Yes, we could have mandated gloves masks and sanitizer for schools and food service, etc, implemented temperature taking for airports, schools, etc, but due to the total vacuum of any leadership or policy, we reverted to panic mode.

Yes we are. I want you to keep this fact in mind: We don't know how many people are infected. We only the number from people who go in to get checked. For all you know there's a ton of people with a slight flu that are now fine. My son and myself had a pretty rough cough and fever Feb 30. Could that have been the chinese virus? We don't know. Extrapolate.

Based on everything I've read there's two schools of thought:

1. Let the virus take hold. Save the economy, let God sort out the vulnerable.

2. Quarantine and contain. Save the vulnerable, life-support the economy until the virus dies out.

US and others are doing #2.

England is doing #1.

We'll see how that plays out.