The deaths are only part of the story. The economic cost of a significant chunk of the workforce being down with a virus is the reason many large companies now pay for the flu vaccine for employees.

In the absence of a vaccine, the next best option appears to be social distancing. From the China data, the "earlier" option (outside Wuhan) is effective in 3-4 weeks and the "later" option (Wuhan/Hubei) takes 8 weeks. Again there is a delta in economic impact.

It will be interesting to see how the Italian quarantine plays out, and whether the short term economic pain is worth getting this outbreak under control before peak summer tourist season.

Ars Technica Guido to COVID-19: https://arstechnica.com/science/2020...e-coronavirus/

I spent the last year living in Uganda. Not to mention 25 years of doing business across Africa and all parts of Asia. I started in China in 1997 back when it was a much different place than today. Back then you had donkey carts bringing produce into Beijing. So maybe I am more sensitized to how the poor live and the effect that global financial crisis's have on the poor. The knock on effect of what is happening to the travel industry is much, much more than you realize. I'm not talking about tourists in Paris. I'm talking about the supply chain from the poor countries to the rich. And much more.

That point is debatable and of course it depends on how a pandemic would roll out. I doubt it would be uniform, but that's just my opinion and I respect your learned opinion.

Good to hear it is not as bad as you originally expected. I supposed everyone is still guessing on how fast it could spread. I saw many predictions that it should have spread much more in the US than it has to date. But it does not seem to be spreading like wildfire just yet.

Removing the concern about the lives of 50m people for a minute and dispassionately looking at macro picture, 50m people die each year from auto accidents (so I've read recently) and the global population still increases. 50m is less than half of one percent of the global population, right? It is not something to be lightly judged in any case.

There were 57 Millions death globally in 2017 so it is quite impossible that 50 millions die each year from auto accidents. https://ourworldindata.org/causes-of-death

As trublu points rightly, 50 Million deaths is a doubling of mortality.

If the mass majority of those workers are healthy enough to get back to work two weeks after the symptoms hit, and they can be around 50% productive using their smartphones and laptops while suffering the symptoms, then it should not be such a bad hit to the economy. Nowhere near as bad as the current panic. IMHO.

Sorry. I must have read some bogus stat in that respect. Maybe it should have read as 50m injured in auto accidents. But I did just read that 130 million babies are born each year, according to the UN.

I don't want to get into a head to head.

I don't think this is less worrisome than before, what I do think is that we can slow it down massively to prevent infrastructure strain through extremely aggressive measures, especially if taken EARLY. If we don't, I personally think this will a humanitarian disaster, the scale of which we've not seen since WW2, and the true 'worst-case' scenarios would put it above WW2 by some margin.

And no, 50M don't die of auto accidents a year (it's about a million I believe, so still terrible). The TOTAL world-wide _all cause_ mortality is about 50M. If we assume a reasonable pandemic scenario, that 30% of the world will be infected in 'business as usual' (I think it would be more likely 50%, but let's be conservative), that would be 2.2B cases. Assuming 1% case-fatality rate would be 1%, that would be 22M deaths. But because of massive health-care infrastructure strain, and extrapolating what we're seeing e.g. in Italy, 2% is more realistic, with 44M deaths...and that's not adding into the equation that all-cause mortality from all other causes will also increase due to lack of health-care facilities.

tb

That is a very good point. I can tell you that French hospital workers have been tied up in countless meetings and briefings over the last couple of weeks. So far they have few cases per hospital, but if they get hit hard with intensive care patients then that does affect their ability to take care of other patients who need intensive care.

This is actually _the main_ point. The case-fatality rate is a red herring. Total health-care infrastructure collapse is a very real possibility in 'business as usual'. The knock-on impacts of that would be unprecedented in at least a century, and would (temporarily) wipe out all the gains we've had in healthcare delivery for the last 40-50 years.

This isn't about you (or I) not dieing of COVID-19 (I hope my chances are reasonable). There are massive implications for society if all hospitals get overwhelmed.

A couple of weeks ago, when Iran/Italy/S. Korea declared their emergencies, pretty much at the same time, I became rather fatalistic about COVID-19, I felt we can't really stop the pandemic...but even outside China, those places that have taken EARLY aggressive policies appear to be doing well, e.g. S. Korea, although we really need another week to see how effective it's been.

China fluffed the chance for complete containment by not acting in early Jan: but they have more than made up for it (internally). The complacency of Western countries by contrast, with all information available, really beggars belief.

tb

Reactions to this virus are INSANE. Don't you remember the swine flu which was more deadly and was actually considered a pandemic 10 years ago? Nobody got this anxious over it and we all survived.

You are right, people WERE concerned about H1N1 in the early stages, because a global viral pandemic with high morbidity/ mortality (which is what we are facing with COVID-19) is a truly scary prospect. 15-20% of the world's population was infected by H1N1, but, we were lucky: it actually had a mortality rate which was probably _lower_ than seasonal influenza, and the elderly, the most vulnerable group, were partially protected from exposure to earlier H1N1 strains...

Just read upthread about the impact of 20-50% of the population with COVID-19, but a mortality rate of ~2% and a hospitalization rate of >5%...this is NOT the same thing....

tb

Based on what can we judge whether or not it spreading like wildfire. The Americans have no way to know whether it is spreading or not as the amount of testing they are doing is tiny.

Believe me, I'm not panicking. And unlike you, I would much rather be wrong and have a global disaster averted. I don't know who you are, and likewise...the reason I'm posting is for public information. What you said upthread about H1N1 and comparisons with COVID-19 are just plain wrong....

Feel free to go about 'business as usual', until either yes, this blows over, or there is no business as usual. But if you want to look at the evidence, there are clear signs of measures individuals and governments can take to mitigate COVID-19. And those measures appear to be most effective (by far) if taken early, when the majority of people's lives are NOT already impacted...

tb

One of the above posters is an infectious diseases specialist and virologist based in Beijing and the US. The other one is a random guy on the Internet.
5 points if you spot who's who.

Santa Clara County has banned all social gatherings of more than 1000 people, starting at midnight tonight, and said that this is enforceable by Sheriff's deputies and police. https://www.nbcbayarea.com/news/coro...death/2251123/

Recall being briefed on it, and just adopted the customary wash hands, masks (I know, but having lived in Asia, it ain't a weird thing), sanitizers, etc...even then, we analyzed projections and ran monte carlo scenarios, but just didn't run around telling people about it. Not sure, but social media wasn't really a thing then?