Hackensack patient being evaluated for virus.

I can't open the first article but if the author said the the fatality rate of the Coronavirus is equal to that of the Spanish flu - the real flu not an imaginary one happening now with modern medicine and knowledge - he's wrong.

I'm not exactly sure what the point is. You don't have to reach back to the Spanish flu and project it into modern time to have a perspective on this disease's death rate.  SARS was 10%.  MERS was 34%.  Bird Flu was 60%.  The kicker here is how fast and easy this thing seems to be spreading.  That's bad enough.   No need for the extra scare tactics.

 


bub said:

You don't have to reach back to the Spanish flu and project it into modern time to have a perspective on this disease's death rate. 

But you reached back 100 years to compare the Spanish flu rate against this new virus for your comparison assumption.

The point is you cannot use a lethality from 100 years ago as a current comparison basis.  


Someone described the AIDS virus as the worst pandemic in human history.  I cited the Spanish flu numbers in response to that, not to use it as a point of comparison to Coronavirus.  I agree that we should not be reaching back 100 (or 1000 - "Black Death") years for comparison to earlier pandemics, especially since that lends itself to melodrama and hysteria.


bub said:

One thing I haven't seen is commentary on China's horrible air quality as a possible factor in outcomes there.  Wuhan's air quality, like much of China, is at a dangerous level and three times worse than it is around here.   I found some medical studies concluding that some forms of air pollution definitely aggravate pneumonia.  That, combined with China's probably inferior health care even in ideal times, suggests that we will do better.

This is very important. Local air qualify affects an individual's lung microbiome.  And an individual's lung microbiome will influence that individual's response to respiratory disease. 


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