Hacker News Reader

Comment by jki275 | Hacker News Reader

No we're not. That's absolutely absurd to claim. It might -- MIGHT -- kill 2-3% of people who are highly susceptible to it, people who are in their 70s+, people with cardiac and respiratory disease. Maybe. We don't even know that will happen, because we can probably save a huge percentage of that population as well.

You're fearmongering, and it's bullshit.

View on HN

You're... reverse fearmongering? Downplaying?

Additionally, for someone calling others' claims bullshit, your numbers have no correspondence to reality. In Wuhan, the 3% number was for the general population; for the 70+ age range, it was ~20%.

3% of the infected, not 3% of everyone. You can't compare it to WW2 unless you assume everyone will be infected.

If you don't control a disease, the default assumption is that it infects a substantial fraction of the whole human population.

In almost all examples in human history, whenever a disease stopped, it was either because it burned through most of humanity, or because people decided to make it stop. They don't stop themselves.

That's a ridiculous assumption.

You're pretending we live in the 1400s. We don't.

You're pretending we will take no measures to control this at all. That's simply not the case.

> You're pretending we will take no measures to control this at all. That's simply not the case.

the US gov't has spent the last 1.5 months doing nothing to contain this at all. ending flights from europe isn't going to do anything to help if they aren't testing people and preventing spread inside the country

It hasn't existed in the US for the last 1.5 months.

We are testing people, and we are doing quite a bit to prevent spread inside of the country and out.

first case was Jan 21st apparently[1]

[1]https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/usa-coronavirus/

This is false. Studies done in Wuhan show that people with CVD have well over a 10% mortality rate. In addition, COVID-19 has the potential to cause permanent disability if it does not kill you first.

I assume the first sentence in your comment describes the rest of it?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com