Eagle367 said:
Sorry but that's wrong. Hospitalization rates can reach as high as 20% and when the healthcare systems completely collapse, the death rate can be as high as 15%. Italy has a death rate of around 10%. If you leave the virus as is, the death rate is much higher than what we are seeing anywhere |
Italy is only testing the very sick and at risk health professionals. The death rate is above 5% for all provinces, varying only according to how old the outbreak is, no matter if they have only 100 or 50,000 cases like Lombardy. You can check it for yourself, if you want.
Besides, the chances of dying, averaged for all ages, if you need an ICU, is already 50%, so even if ventilators and ICU beds completely vanished from the face of the Earth, the death rate would no more than double (some people would survive regardless, specially the young. Believe it or not, waiting lines for ICU beds, in the developing world, are a thing in hospitals. It isn't an instant death sentence to be deprived of one).
These are the Imperial College's most recent estimates (up to March 28) for the true number of infected, out of the total population, across 11 countries in Europe, and the 95% confidence interval within the square brackets:
Austria 1.1% [0.36%-3.1%]
Belgium 3.7% [1.3%-9.7%]
Denmark 1.1% [0.40%-3.1%]
France 3.0% [1.1%-7.4%]
Germany 0.72% [0.28%-1.8%]
Italy 9.8% [3.2%-26%]
Norway 0.41% [0.09%-1.2%]
Spain 15% [3.7%-41%]
Sweden 3.1% [0.85%-8.4%]
Switzerland 3.2% [1.3%-7.6%]
United Kingdom 2.7% [1.2%-5.4%]
Italy and Spain were already literally a week or two away from a 60 - 70% infection rate if the lockdown hadn't been instated (counting all home infections etc. that happened since then). No wonder things looked that bad in certain places.
