At this point, the only rational thing to do is to try to slow the spread. The good news is that this is a very mild virus, and the vast majority of infected people will have minor symptoms. The fatality rate in Korea is currently 0.6%, and becuase of the comprehensive nature of their testing, this should be considered the upper bound on CFR.
That's the exact opposite of what the WHO said when they made the pandemic declarations:
"We cannot say this loudly enough, or clearly enough, or often enough: all countries can still change the course of this pandemic," reads a statement from Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, director-general of WHO.[1]
South Korea has shown this to be correct.
[1] https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2020/03/11/corona...
But more importantly, you’re not dying and not clogging up a hospital. That’s what’s relevant to this discussion.
It will be a big problem both in Europe and in the US, because they are starting to take measures only now.
The vast majority of cases are mild, like a head cold. This is a fact, and has been reported around the world.
You’re arguing about relative hospitalization rates, but that has nothing to do with the discussion here. Mild cases aren’t clogging up ICU wards at all, because they’re quite mild.
I think you mean that this should be considered the goal upper bound on CFR. It's really the lower bound on CFR if you do everything right. If you do everything wrong, like the US is heading towards, you get overloaded health systems, critical shortages, and a 12% CFR or higher.
I think the true measure will be the year over year total mortality.
If we overload our hospitals then CFR will go towards the number of cases that require hospitalization. Which is around 20%. Italy is currently far over hospital capacity and has a CFR today of 8% and rising.
Media and government keep making this claim, yet where are the recovery numbers of people? It drags on for weeks and weeks with no end in sight, correct? And current case fatality rate in Italy is 8%, was 7% this morning, was 6% yesterday - because they do not have hospital resources for the number of serious cases they have.
Serious, critical, and dead outcomes are said to be over 20% of case. This being described as "very low, a very small number" by certain people. That is not a low number at all.
Regarding the rise in CFR: it will naturally go up as cases decline, because fatalities stem from a time when the case rate was more rapidly increasing. Korea’s case rate had been declining for several days:
https://mobile.twitter.com/AdamJKucharski/status/12297080012...
https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.nytimes.com/2020/03/05/heal...
At some point, this scary story is going to have to be adjusted to reflect reality.
Buy a stool for crying out loud, they're like $10
In comparison, Korea's response was disastrously wrong. Their "Let's test everyone" policy sent lots of people into medical limbo ("We can’t let you go because you're COVID-19 positive ... but meanwhile we have particularly nothing to do for you because you're not that ill") and got their hospitals flooded with mild cases.