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Some Hard information on #COVID19 as compared to other epidemics in recent history.
==COVID-19==
R0 = 2.2
Global Mortality: 7%
Death Toll = 4,718 (and rising)
== 2009 Swine-flu ==
R0 = 1.5
Global Mortality: 0.04%
Death Toll = 500,000
== 2002 SARS ==
R0 = 3
Global Mortality: 9.6%
Death Toll = 349
== 1920 Spanish Flu ==
R0 = 2
Global Mortality: 2.5%
Death toll = 100 million
For those who don't know R0 is the average number of people who will contract the disease from an infected individual.
As you can see the numbers are very concerning. The only disease that had the same potential for damage as this would have been the SARS epidemic in 2002. Luckily it was contained early on and never spread. The big difference seems to be the 2002 SARS epidemic had very few if any asymptomatic individuals. So it was easy to stop the disease before it spread (artificially lowering the R0 effectively).
However the COVID-19 has a large portion of people with the disease whoa re asymptomatic. This causes the spread to go unhindered. Despite having a lower R0 and lower mortality rate the death toll is already more than 10x what it was for 2002 SARS.
The numbers are scary, it suggests to me, we are in for some really nasty times ahead...
If not put in check the disease will eventually affect close to everyone (the logistic model is asymptotic) this means a lot of people taking hospital beds, much more than we have beds available. And there goes another chunk of the population that couldn't be treated(of cowonaviwus or something else).
No one has immunity to it, that means that anyone exposed to it is very likely to catch it. This means health professionals are very likely to catch it. Health, which is an expertise game. The best doctors are usually the oldest and most experienced.
All true.
Thought keep in mind what "putting the virus in check" means.. Our best efforts now will slow down the epidemic. This is a good thing because as you said there are a limited number of beds and a shortage of hospital staff. So if you can spread the disease out over a longer period of time then we wont go over-capacity and more people live.
But its important to note that those measures, while they may save some lives, it wont reduce the number of people who get effected. The virus is out int he wild now, there is no reversing that.
@KatGoesWoof I wouldnt say cant, but its very unlikely.
Its spread to far too many regions to be able to stop it by quarantine, that is literally impossible at this point. Especially because many carriers of this disease are asymptomatic which makes quarantining useless.
The only way you could possibly stop it is via immunity. That means either you catch the disease and live through it (which I wouldn't call stopping it considering the 7% mortality rate) or a vaccine.
A vaccine is possible but very unlikely. There are several Coronaviruses that have been in the wild for some time now. Four of which are so common virtually every adult has caught them. Some are less common but far more deadly, like SARS. Despite this no one has ever created a safe and effective vaccine for a virus int he corona family of viruses. So it is unlikely they will find one for this. But maybe...
@KatGoesWoof Yes in fact many have went far beyond COVID19 in terms of how widespread they are.
10% - 20% of people who think they have the common cold are actually expierncing a type of corona virus. More specifically one of four strains of coronavirus that present similar to the common cold. As you can imagine they are as wide spread as the common cold.
But even though they are widespread they dont tend to kill people. So dont worry too much.
SARS virus is also int he Coronavirus class, it has never become widespread though.
@KatGoesWoof The reason the other coronaviruses were never an issue has less to do with how they spread and more to with the fact that they just dont tend to kill people.
Obviously they have spread to a much larger portion of the population than COVID19 has.
