Excellent description of the basic molecular biology of cells and RNA viruses like the new coronavirus
Plus an update on how aggressive testing in South Korea has implied that the case fatality ratio (CFR) is 0.6% thus far, which is good news, but still at least six times your average flu.
It's just math: if 80% of the species gets a disease that, in the best of situations (hospitals not overrun, respirators for all, etc), yields an 0.6% CFR, that's:
7.8 billion x 0.8 = 6.24 billion; 6.24 billion x 0.006 = 37.44 million deaths.
You can play with all these numbers all day long on your very own calculator, but the immediate and obvious point is that keeping the numbers of infected low is utterly critical. We're fucking the pooch on that one, especially here in the US, as will become obvious as soon as we start testing in earnest, having done fuck-all for the six weeks that China bought us because MAGA.
Here's the US numbers according to the above: 330 million x 0.8 = 264 million; 264m x 0.006 = 1.584 million deaths.
Note that this presumes a South Korea CFR; it doesn't include excess deaths from all other human ailments that would go unaddressed in a national pandemic.
Other issues: the hospitalization rate seems to be around 10-15%. Let's take 10% as the rate. Let's stick to the US: 330m x 0.8 = 264m; 264m x 0.1 = 26.4m people needed extra hospital beds, respirators in some fraction, etc.
We have that surge capacity? Who doesn't get treatment for whatever other slings and arrows the flesh is heir to?
Say half that rate get infected in the US: great, 13.2m need extra hospital beds. And around 800,000 die.
Note that if med personnel aren't protected, fatigue aside, they'll be knocked out of the game for 14 days if exposed, however long if they're ill and recover, or forever if they die. Add that in. Add in the panic this will all engender -- especially since the complacency and denial is sky-high, wrongly, and that's the photonegative of future panic -- and the economic and political effects thereof. Etc.
Get the issue now, MAGA morons? And not just you; most people I know, including even PhDs who should know better, have their heads so firmly lodged up their asses/in the sand that they deny this simple, obvious math.
This is why any public health or biomed expert worth a fuck is deeply concerned, to say the least. No, panic is never indicated, even in the worst case, but good luck tamping it down. Especially in the United States of Selfish Ignorance.
Again, you can play with all these numbers all day long and you're not going to come up with anything good. Vaccines, if even possible (no guarantee) are 12-18 months out; then we need to ramp up production into, globally, the billions. Could give only partial protection. Any drugs that work, to whatever effect, will need to be ramped up into the billions, globally. Etc. And all that production would have to happen inside a pandemic, nationally and globally.
Once you stop the idiotic denial, you can start working out the endless likely consequences.
I might add that a pandemic of this nature -- and likely from the coronavirus family, if not flu, which killed 50-100 million people in 1918-19 (out of about a billion)-- has been known to be literally inevitable since forever. Since 2000, we've had two coronavirus outbreaks already: SARS and MERS.
We've all done fuck-all about it, from you, Dear Reader, to all governmental and other institutions, minus a few brave people and worthy institutions.
So if you want to blame someone, and you will, include yourself.
Buckle up.
The following is an exaggeration, of course, but this is exactly what flashed in my head the second I saw China take massive steps to stop the virus, which meant, of course, it was already too late and would go global:
It's just math: if 80% of the species gets a disease that, in the best of situations (hospitals not overrun, respirators for all, etc), yields an 0.6% CFR, that's:
7.8 billion x 0.8 = 6.24 billion; 6.24 billion x 0.006 = 37.44 million deaths.
You can play with all these numbers all day long on your very own calculator, but the immediate and obvious point is that keeping the numbers of infected low is utterly critical. We're fucking the pooch on that one, especially here in the US, as will become obvious as soon as we start testing in earnest, having done fuck-all for the six weeks that China bought us because MAGA.
Here's the US numbers according to the above: 330 million x 0.8 = 264 million; 264m x 0.006 = 1.584 million deaths.
Note that this presumes a South Korea CFR; it doesn't include excess deaths from all other human ailments that would go unaddressed in a national pandemic.
Other issues: the hospitalization rate seems to be around 10-15%. Let's take 10% as the rate. Let's stick to the US: 330m x 0.8 = 264m; 264m x 0.1 = 26.4m people needed extra hospital beds, respirators in some fraction, etc.
We have that surge capacity? Who doesn't get treatment for whatever other slings and arrows the flesh is heir to?
Say half that rate get infected in the US: great, 13.2m need extra hospital beds. And around 800,000 die.
Note that if med personnel aren't protected, fatigue aside, they'll be knocked out of the game for 14 days if exposed, however long if they're ill and recover, or forever if they die. Add that in. Add in the panic this will all engender -- especially since the complacency and denial is sky-high, wrongly, and that's the photonegative of future panic -- and the economic and political effects thereof. Etc.
Get the issue now, MAGA morons? And not just you; most people I know, including even PhDs who should know better, have their heads so firmly lodged up their asses/in the sand that they deny this simple, obvious math.
This is why any public health or biomed expert worth a fuck is deeply concerned, to say the least. No, panic is never indicated, even in the worst case, but good luck tamping it down. Especially in the United States of Selfish Ignorance.
Again, you can play with all these numbers all day long and you're not going to come up with anything good. Vaccines, if even possible (no guarantee) are 12-18 months out; then we need to ramp up production into, globally, the billions. Could give only partial protection. Any drugs that work, to whatever effect, will need to be ramped up into the billions, globally. Etc. And all that production would have to happen inside a pandemic, nationally and globally.
Once you stop the idiotic denial, you can start working out the endless likely consequences.
I might add that a pandemic of this nature -- and likely from the coronavirus family, if not flu, which killed 50-100 million people in 1918-19 (out of about a billion)-- has been known to be literally inevitable since forever. Since 2000, we've had two coronavirus outbreaks already: SARS and MERS.
We've all done fuck-all about it, from you, Dear Reader, to all governmental and other institutions, minus a few brave people and worthy institutions.
So if you want to blame someone, and you will, include yourself.
Buckle up.
The following is an exaggeration, of course, but this is exactly what flashed in my head the second I saw China take massive steps to stop the virus, which meant, of course, it was already too late and would go global: