I think you’d need at least a 20% death rate to justify actual panic and end of the world doom mongering.
But yes, it’s very overblown and people treating it like it’s the next Spanish flu is probably more harmful than what the virus actually is.
Depends on how you look at it and how things develop.
Here's an interesting statement by a German virologist:
In Deutschland wird diskutiert, ob das Tragen eines Mundschutzes Pflicht werden soll. Andreas Gassen positioniert sich eindeutig. In Griechenland wird die erste Infektion in einem Flüchtlingslager gemeldet. Die Entwicklungen im Liveticker.
www.welt.de
The figures are, 60-70% infected over 2 years or more.
Lets assume the worldwide average will be 70% infected, with death rate of 1% in countries with first world grade healthcare, and 3% world average, extrapolating from China. Keeping these rates is optimistic, as it implies no major country gets their healthcare system so overwhelmed that, say, half of the 20% that develop complications die from lack of intensive medical care.
That means:
2.3 million dead in USA.
3.1 million dead in EU.
163 million dead worldwide.
For comparison, the death toll of the Spanish Flu is estimated between 40 and 100 million, though world population was much smaller back then, around 2 billion. So in relative terms, it may be almost as bad as the Spanish Flu, which, stating the obvious, was not the end of the world or even breakdown of governments grade event despite partially coinciding with the damn WW1, while in absolute terms, the numbers will be much worse.
The economic aspect is the undervalued one though i think, the world economy is much more interdependent than it was in 1910's, and the effects of travel restrictions, damages and panic aren't going to be nice.
bluecollarprepping.blogspot.com
nypost.com
www.cdc.gov
