NotoriousREV wrote: Thu Mar 12, 2020 2:32 pm
tim wrote: Thu Mar 12, 2020 2:15 pm
...out of a population of 60 million. Lets not get too bent out of shape.
Unchecked, you’d expect 70-80% of the population to get it. The vast majority of those cases will be mild. Around 20% of those cases will require hospitalisation. Around 5% will need ICU. The death rate is somewhere between 2-5%-ish.
So 42 million infected. 8.4 million requiring hospital treatment. 2.1 million ICU cases. About 1 million dead. Yeah, no need to get bent out of shape.
The U.K. has just passed the point where the number of cases is doubling every 2 days. We’re at 460 official, known cases. It’d take 31 days to hit 42 million cases if we do nothing.
Watching at lunch I'm not sure who BBC had on but a very senior public health official I think - quoted the 70-80% figure as a worst case but said that China's currently at c20% and it's also currently levelling off. That's still some potetnially big numbers of dead people though.
She was, however, also suggesting that it's not that we won't lockdown, just a matter of timing as to when we do. As I wasn't aware of who it was it's hard to know if they were just being told to say the right thing, but she was ceratinly advocating not to get panicked yet about a perceived lack of Gov't action - they were being closely advised constantly by key scientists.
I guess we'll find out within the next few days though eh?