Don't Expect Millions to Die from Coronavirus, Says Richard Epstein | Hacker News Reader

Don't Expect Millions to Die from Coronavirus, Says Richard Epstein

reason.com

8 pointsfortran776 comments

In the US, I suspect a few thousand, perhaps in the 10s of thousands, will die from Coronavirus.

The people touting all sorts of preventative measures trying "flatten the curve" will claim victory and pat themselves on the back.

The people saying "its just the flu but with extra hype" will look at the final numbers, determine that they were right and pat themselves on the back.

And the different factions in this country will go back to their regularly scheduled shouting past each other and calling their respective out-groups idiots.

I think the number of ventilators in the US is like 200K and hopefully with "flattening the curve" the goal is to keep deaths near a million in the US.

https://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2020/03/a-new-analysi...

And if they're wrong I'm sure they will be happy they were wrong.

A 1% death rate is 3 million people in the US, assuming 100% infection rate. A .3% death rate is about 1 million. I hope we’re so fortunate to keep it below 1 million.

Hope isn't reality. Overall 20%-50% infection rate is most likely because of the multiple infection waves due to cycles of shutdowns and the extreme infectivity that will occur before a safe and effective vaccine candidate can be manufactured. That maybe 3-5 years. Also, post-resolution immunity duration is unknown.

Furthermore, infection rates in the US aren't being tracked so the CFR denominator is completely unknown.

And, focusing on CFR alone is myopic because of the serious, potentially permanent lung damage that occurs from this virus in those who have "mild" symptoms. There are a plethora of reports of unknown-lasting reductions in lung function by 20-30%.

There are only 62k ventilators in the US and 12k held by the SNS. Ventilators aren't simple machines and nowhere near as simple as residential -PAP machines, so this untested "open source" effort or GM saying they would produce them are virtue-signaling, useless noise inapplicable to the present timeframe. And where ventilators are typically used, there are only 65k ICU beds in the US. Furthermore, the machines aren't uniformly distributed. Areas with low ICU beds per capita and large cities will need many more, and some rural areas may not have any ventilators for hundreds of miles.

While there are 140k respiratory therapists in the US, not all of them work in intensive care or hospitals. Nurses are also required to staff an ICU ward.

All of this is moot without PPE needed for medical staff to provide care. No amount of medical robots would be able to tech our way out of this fundamental limitation.

Why would I listen to a law professor for information on epidemiology?

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