I’m pretty doubtful that this is much worse than the flu. But I am self quarantined, stocked up on food etc. my level of doubt is not nearly strong enough to counter the severity of consequences if I am wrong.
My wife has asthma, and my parents are elderly. I’m middle aged. I’m much more concerned about hurting other people.
That said, flu statistics aren’t great. I’m pretty sure I’ve had the flu, due to severity of illness. But I’ve never been tested for it. I don’t know anyone who has. When people die of pneumonia etc they Aren’t automatically tested for flu.
The CDC numbers I found are slightly more than half that for influenza.
Without significant mitigating precautions, which was the context for this discussion, the USA would very likely have more than 100 million Covid-19 infections in the next three months.
Yes, it's technically a logistic process rather than exponential. But there is no pre-existing immunity, so it won't hit the inflection point until it bumps up against the natural limitations. Meaning herd immunity due to a large percentage of potential victims already infected, or limitations in how many people will likely meet a sick person. The latter won't happen without the mitigations I'm talking about.
A third of the population infected seems as reasonable a ball-park guess as any for when the first point would be hit. But I really, really hope that the mitigations prevent this.
My wife has asthma, and my parents are elderly. I’m middle aged. I’m much more concerned about hurting other people.
That said, flu statistics aren’t great. I’m pretty sure I’ve had the flu, due to severity of illness. But I’ve never been tested for it. I don’t know anyone who has. When people die of pneumonia etc they Aren’t automatically tested for flu.