Comment by 34679 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by 34679 | Hacker News Reader

If Merkel's assertion that 60%-70% of the population in Germany will be infected is accurate, and we end up with similar numbers in the US, the math is pretty stunning.[1] With a US population of 330,000,000, we end up with 198,000,000 infected, using the lower estimate of 60%.[2] A study in China concluded a 2.4% mortality rate and the WHO reported 3.4% among reported cases.[3][4]

Using a (hopefully not) conservative 1% mortality rate, we're talking about 1,980,000 dead Americans. That's more than the American Revolution, the Civil War, WWI, WWII, the Vietnam War, the Middle East wars, and indeed every other military conflict the US has engaged in since 1775.. combined.[5] And not just a bit more, it's roughly 3 times as many as all US combat fatalities since the beginning of our country.

[1] https://www.cnbc.com/2020/03/11/angela-merkel-most-people-wi... [2]https://www.worldometers.info/world-population/us-population... [3]http://www.cidrap.umn.edu/news-perspective/2020/02/study-720... [4]https://twitter.com/WHO/status/1234872254883909642 [5]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_military_casualt...

That's ~670 9/11 attacks' worth of dead.

~350x the number of deaths in Iraq and Afghanistan.

~10x the Civil War.

~3x the yearly heart disease deaths.

~1 death every 0.75 seconds

And this'll occur before June, and something like this will reoccur every year (is that right?!).

If this thing is anywhere near 1% mortality, the US really is in for a tough time.

Yeah, you're right, that is stunning

I really need to call my folks now.

> and something like this will reoccur every year (is that right?!).

No. Once you are one of those 60% you either die or get immunity.

It depends. The seasonal flu mutates enough between seasons that last year's immunity doesn't help you much. If we're lucky, this one doesn't do that, or it mutates in a way that symptoms aren't as severe (since causing the host to die or to be isolated in ICU is also bad for the virus, so there's evolutionary pressure towards less severe symptoms).

This isn't flu, Corona's don't mutate in this way.

There are many weaker coronaviruses floating around that give the common cold. We are still getting the common cold from those, so apparently it mutates in a way that our immmunesystem can't stop it.

It's complicated. https://doi.org/10.1093/nsr/nwaa036

There have been an incident of someone getting infected twice. Although there seems to be no confidence in the results: https://www.wired.com/story/did-a-woman-get-coronavirus-twic...

*has

Results look like ~20% need oxygen(50m) and 5% need ventilators(17m).

How many spare beds do we have?

And so begins the War on Corona.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com