Coronavirus is not just the flu

Summary: coronavirus is deadlier, more contagious ,and has no vaccine or population immunity meaning it will likely spread through a chunk of world population, kill millions of older and medically compromised people, as well as cause economic and social upheaval in the world.

R0 is a measure of how contagious a virus is.

coronavirus is much more contagious than seasonal flu with an R0 that is almost 3 times greater: 1.3 vs 3 meaning it will infect many more people

Because #coronavirus is so contagious some epidemiologists are predicting large portions of the world will be infected. I've seen estimates from 40 to 80 percent.

Coronavirus is about 5x to 20x more deadly than seasonal flu.

Case Fatality Rate = Deaths/Confirmed Cases

Case fatality rate for flu is 0.1 to 0.6 percent and although difficult to know exactly for for coronavirus it's estimated 2.3% (according to Chinese CDC which most likely under-reports) which makes it 5x-20x more deadly.

A common refrain is that #coronavirus has only killed a few thousand people, and that the flu kills hundreds of thousands, isn't the flu a much greater risk?

The answer is absolutely not.

coronavirus us doubles every week

This means that as coronavirus cases quickly spread, and some percentage result in deaths, the number of deaths will eventually eclipse that of the seasonal flu just as it has with SARS and MERS.

how many people in the world

These numbers are very rough estimates in a rapidly evolving situation, but they should be enough to grant us some perspective and acknowledge the scale of the challenge that we are dealing with.

Trying to downplay this virus as just the flu will lead to dangerous complacency because there are things we can do, and will have to do, to mitigate its spread and to act we first have to acknowledge the seriousness of this challenge

Another refrain I hear is that the vast majority of people who are healthy with no underlying health conditions only experience mild flu-like symptoms. This is "good" news... except for all of our parents and grand-parents.

coronavirus hospital beds

Containment is already too late. Thanks to government incompetence we have not even had the capacity to test for new cases but as our testing capability ramps up, many several thousand currently existing cases will be identified around the country.

The goal now will be to SLOW the spread of the virus so that we can provide services for everyone who needs it and so that we can buy time for the discovery of treatment and vaccines

See what I wrote one month ago...