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Teeqoz on 25 March 2020
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JRPGfan said:

That is not a worst case.

Worse case (70% infection rate) the health care system collapses.
By then its not 2,5% mortality rate, but something likely well over 10%.

You likely wont even have people to give beds/care, or air to the sick.
Not to mention enough ventilators, in such a situation.

In italy its around ~9,8% currently (confirmed vs mortalities):
Believe it or not, there health care system still funktions pretty well.

At a 70% infection rate, any system would totally collapse..... at that point hospitals would be like? whats the point.
Just stay home and die there, we cant help.


Upto ~20% require medical attention aided air (not ventilators) but a sick bed to lay down in, and 100% oxygen to help them get air through their lunges.

Thats why I dont think Mortality rates will go over 20%.
However you *could* see something like 10-15% mortality rates, if things get really nasty and health care collapses completely.



Your worse case should be:

70% infected + ~15% mortality rate =  ~34,4 million people dieing in the US.

Thats the absolutely worst, this virus can do.
Hopefully that doesnt happend but.... it gives you perspective.

My country, Norway, has tested roughly 1.5% of the population, which is probably one of the highest test coverages of any country (more than twice as many per capita as South Korea for instance). We have 3k confirmed cases, which should be a decent enough sample size to draw some conclusions. 

So far, we have 14 dead, which is a less than 0.5% CFR. We have 237 hospital admissions, which is a less than 8% hospitalisation rate. 2.5% of the cases have required intensive care (some of which have sadly perished).

While these numbers might increase a bit (notwithstanding a huge amount of undiagnosed cases, though that would bring the numbers further down), as some cases will progress and get worse, and certainly if our health system gets over capacity, it's easy to see that your estimates are absolutely ludicrous and not based on good data. Data sets from other countries that have done extensive testing tell the same story. Italy's CFR and hospitalization rate are so high because they haven't tested enough people.

This doesn't mean this isn't a serious illness. But you still shouldn't make up numbers, or make wild guesses without having done proper research.