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haxxiy on 02 March 2020
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SvennoJ said:
haxxiy said:

A lot of people were repatriated from the Diamond Princess and died back home or are still seriously ill :/

I figured the serious/critical rate was about 5% based on the Diamond Princess, which is still at 18% based on available total stats. Does it really matter though, we hardly have enough beds to get through a regular flu season. Putting 5% of the population in hospitals is going to be a problem. It needs to be slowed down.

One repatriated Australian died AFAIK. The British man who died as well was being treated in Japan. Besides, cruise ships probably skew older than average, and not everyone is going to get it. Even H1N1, who was a far milder disease and became the dominant flu strain in 2009 - 2010, infected like 10 - 15% of people.

The CDC in previous studies seems to think 33% of infected in a pandemic is possible or even likely, though. If that's a 1% death rate disease, with 5% of serious cases, that would mean potentially over five million people needing hospital care in the US alone. That's five times more than there are hospital beds.

Of course, not everyone will get it at the same time, but it potentially opens up the door to quite dramatic situations where care needs to be withheld from certain patients and given to others. Man, that's why I hated bioethic classes. No easy answers there.