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Rams43
Attempts to limit the spread of this virus are laudable but ultimately doomed to fail, although I do see the value of spreading them out over a longer period of time.
This virus will ultimately infect 150M people, give or take, no matter what steps are taken.
Our country deals with the flu and flu related deaths every single year without panicking. So why panic now?
Experts tell us that the fatality rate is around 1%, give or take.
I have never in my life seen such general panic over such a low risk disease. It’s psychological and economic impact is not unlike the beginning of WWII, for crying out loud. Think about that.
Look, I do favor common sense measures. But I don’t favor these extreme ‘throw out the baby with the bath water’ type of panic spreading decisions. They seem like madness to me.
No *expert* is saying it's 1 percent at all. They have no clue. It's well over that in this country and well over that in Italy. South Korea is close to that.
You cannot extrapolate data out for 350 million people based on a few hundred tests.
Even if 1% is true that is 10x higher than the flu.
Flu is most virulent in terms of being passed on when a person is symptomatic. As such they're usually at home in bed or people are aware they are sick.
This thing has a 14-day incubation period and can be passed on when people are asymptomatic.
If you think 1.5 million deaths is people overreacting (and that's based on your figures), then I guess we have different levels of overreacting.
The worst-case scenario is we overreact and don't end up with hundreds of thousands of dead people.
Failing to act and then regretting it is infinitely worse.
Having said that, if this thing dissipates relatively quickly then people will say we overreacted because there is no way of knowing if it was the emergency measures that helped clear it up.
My best friend back in the UK was an Emergency Planning officer at government level for 30-years (he retired 6-months ago) and he says he's never seen anything like this.
Then again, all those departments do is plan for stuff that most of us think will never happen.
There is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so.