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Angelus on 14 March 2020
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crissindahouse said:
Angelus said:
I think we can look to South Korea for a more accurate representation of the real death rate of this virus. They've done incredibly broad testing on their population, and their mortality for it is around 0.6%. This, of course, is still magnitudes higher than the flu, but it's also far from the percentages we see thrown around in the media.

I think we need more than one country for some real stats. Not because of the number of cases in South Korea but because not every country has the same health system. I would guess that South Korea will be one of the better countries to let people survive. USA as example could be already worse. The worldwide average will be above South Korea for sure. Most cases in South Korea are also still active. Even if they would be at 0 new cases you would still have "a lot" more deaths the next weeks. 

And we should also not forget that you can use the same argument for the yearly flu of which we also don't know the real number of infected persons. So, if the death rate is "only" like 1% from this now then the death rate of the normal flu is also lower as proclaimed. in the end it will be still around the same factor just that both will have a lower death rate as mentioned. 

We have 5500 deaths right now and 150k known cases. Even if we have 550k cases already, the death rate is at 1% and that without all those already infected who will still die. So, even if we have already over a million infected and not 150k, the death rate could be still above 1%.

Perhaps 0.6% will end up being slightly lower than what we'll see on the whole, and I'm by no means saying that people shouldn't take this virus seriously, or that governments aren't right in taking precautions. My point is, when looking at a country that does wide sweeping testing, rather than other places where you can maybe only get tested under very specific circumstances, it's important to note the percentages go down quite significantly. 

It's the lack of proper response, poor testing protocols, and the ensuing panic by the general population, as a result of seeing fairly skewed statistics that result from this flawed testing process that is really enhancing the damage caused by this virus. At least that's how I see it atm.