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We can't really extrapolate to that level. On one hand, most of the world's population doesn't have access to Western standards of healthcare like in France, Japan and Taiwan (not sure about the Philippines), so you could expect higher mortality than in the non-Chinese cases so far. On the other hand, since most infected appear to develop only symptoms of a mild cold, at best the flu (in flu season) and some seem never to fall ill at all, there's probably an unknown but potentially huge number who don't even suspect they are infected or see a doctor at all, were never tested and don't show up in any statistic. Just saw that from the number of mutations discovered so far, it is suspected that the total might be 200,000. So the ratio of total cases to deaths may be much higher, i. e. mortality much lower than even the currently calculated 0.5 percent outside China.

For comparison take measles, about the most contagious disease there is - on average any case infects twelve others, while Covid-19 is currently estimated at 1.8 to 3.5. About two-and-a-half million died worldwide of them every year until 1980 or so, when vaccinations available since the 60s began to make an impact in the developing world. Even today, mortality is 0.2 percent. We are quite sure of that because it's hard to mistake a case of the measles for something else.

I'm not saying Covid-19 should be disregarded, and I wouldn't like it to hit my family; both my parent's are in their 70s, my father is a stroke patient with a strained immune system from frequent infections due to impaired bodily functions, and my mother narrowly survived a recent acute lung edema which left her with a reduced capacity. But they are just as much at risk from getting a bad case of the flu; and in the great scheme of things, I'm more worried about the recent trend of a resurgence in measle cases due to a lapse in immunizations.

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And there we have it. 47-year-old man with pre-existing condition in North Rhine-Westphalia in critical condition and on ventilation with symptoms of severe pneumonia tested positive along with his wife. Unlike in the separate case of a 25-year-old tourist just returned from Italy, no likely source of infection has been established so far. I'm reminded to stock up on a supply of my regular meds.

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I'm coming back to the South Koreans, who are testing like crazy. And the more they test, and the more cases they find, the lower the fatality rate gets. On 25 February they had about 10:1,000 = 1.0 percent. On the 27th, they had 13:1,766 = 0.74. Yesterday it was 17:3,150 = 0.54. Today it's 17:3,526 = 0.48.

Of course some among the newer cases might eventually die, too; but I suspect when it's all sorted, there will be no more than the 0.4 percent fatalities of all known cases reported some time ago already for China outside Wubei province. And there are probably some, but I still have to see confirmed reports of significant numbers of healthy middle-aged people dying of this.

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Well, what a difference a week makes. Made pancakes for lunch yesterday, saw that I was running low on flour and thought I should get some new if possible. Sure enough, the shelves for pasta, rice and flour looked like the DDR had made a comeback; in fact there was a note they were currently only selling up to four packs per customer of certain stuff like flour and sugar "due to circumstances". Saw a guy with five sixpacks of water bottles in his cart and thought WTF, are you preparing for the zombie apocalypse? Masks and disinfectants get stolen from hospitals, too - sometimes from stocks only accessible to staff.

I mean I, too, have doubled my usual stocks of daily consumables, which among other things means I'm buying another pack of anything as soon as the last bottle of the first of two is going into the fridge. But even that is already luxury stockpiling just so I don't have to change my habits without bothering anyone else to supply me if I should get quarantined at home for two weeks - it's not like the water will stop running from the tap, and unlike the chlorinated stuff you sometimes have in the US, it's actually readily drinkable without feeling like you swallowed a swimming pool. I think people are falling for global pop culture memes.

In reality we're still doing okay, with zero deaths despite 900-plus cases. One is being reported as critical, a guy who was on immunosuppressiva to prepare for an organ transplant. I think this is still the 47-year-old at the root of the North Rhine-Westphalia cluster who had several hospital appointments prior to being diagnosed and was quickly put on life support. Meanwhile the current flu season in Germany (which officially started in the second week of 2020, quite concurrently with COVID-19) has had an estimated 2.6 million cases seeing a doctor, of which ca. 120,000 confirmed by lab tests, and more than 200 deaths.

Not to speak of the national 2017/18 season, the worst for 30 years, which saw about nine million cases and 25,000 deaths (CFR ca. 0.28 percent). That actually strained the German healthcare system pretty hard (not least because a lot of staff also fell sick), and we definitely don't need another similar sickness on top of that. Saw an expert warn we should increase the number of intensive care beds to prepare for a comeback of COVID-19 in fall after a decline in summer. What everybody wants to avoid is a concentrated spike overwhelming the system, so the countermeasures actually make sense despite the economic damage - a customer (caterer) told me last week that cancellation of the International Tourism Fair (since done) would be a real hit to the Berlin service sector.

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This bears repeating. Society will not collapse, there will be no bodies in the street, there will still be water and electricity, and there is no need to break into the national strategic toilet paper reserve. But read this Twitter thread about conditions in Italian hospitals because the spread wasn't stomped on early and hard:

https://twitter.com/silviast9/.../1236933818654896129

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I'm not worried for myself; as I keep saying, chances are I won't even notice if I get the bug since I have a chronically runny nose anyway, and my neck tends towards slight spinal stenosis, with effects that can feel like a bit of the flu sometimes, just without the fever. But I see also somewhat of a problem therein. As noted earlier, both my parents are at high risk, not just from being mid-70s; my mother narrowly survived a lung edema in December, and my father is a stroke patient with an appointment in two weeks to remove a kidney stone which is the likely culprit for repeated recent bouts of urosepsis.

Their area is so far clean, and I'm seriously considering not to travel home for Easter next month as usual, lest I unwittingly bring something with me from metropolitan Berlin. Would suck for them and me, but them catching the bug might suck a lot more.

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Well, we essentially cancelled Easter for the family. Berlin will probably close down all public venues and reduce public transport on Tuesday to at least 20 April to mitigate local spread. We're running emergency operations at the office from Monday, with only one person per room coming in, the rest working from home or field sales only, as far as there will still be appointments. I'm standing in for our office manager who has a public one-and-a-half-hour commute and will leave next month anyway, while I'm cycling to work. We had planned for her to work me in over a six-week period, but now two and remote support will have to do.

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Originally posted by Bassamatic:
I went to one of our local supermarkets yesterday to pick up a few things. The produce section was fully stocked as was the meat department. I even picked up some T-Bones for $3.99 a pound. Everything looked normal except for the TP section and they had no hand sanitizers.

No local schools are closed and I have heard of no restaurants closing. Gas was $1.94. Things are not that far from normal around here.

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Originally posted by Skins2881:
We are the United States of America, we are immune to viruses for some reason.

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Originally posted by sigfreund:

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Originally posted by Skins2881:
We are the United States of America, we are immune to viruses for some reason.

Plus, the only reason we’re having any problems with the disease here is because of the hysteria generated by the BS news media and the Democrats. I’m not sure why foreigners are getting sick and instituting draconian quarantine and other measures, except, perhaps, because they’re foreigners. Yeah, they’re also dying at a faster rate than we are at the moment, but that’s because of their lousy healthcare systems.

Why anyone at all is dying in foreign countries is a little bit of a puzzler, though, because we all know that the disease isn’t really that bad—just a little cough and sniffles, not to mention that more people die from the flu and traffic accidents—so being foreigners must be the reason why the disease turns bad for them in the first place.

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Originally posted by PASig:
No military/NG presence anywhere yet, but I think it is coming. This is getting surreal, I feel like we are living in the movie Deep Impact where everyone is preparing for a comet strike.

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Originally posted by Skins2881:

I'd like to see the pantries and ammo shelves of the people who say 'this is just like the flu', and see if they are putting their money where their mouths are.

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Yeah, they’re also dying at a faster rate than we are at the moment, but that’s because of their lousy healthcare systems

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Originally posted by Rightwire:

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Yeah, they’re also dying at a faster rate than we are at the moment, but that’s because of their lousy healthcare systems

Huh... Our horrible evil healthcare system that must be changed.... Is better?

Whaddayaknow....

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Originally posted by feersum dreadnaught:

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Originally posted by Skins2881:

I'd like to see the pantries and ammo shelves of the people who say 'this is just like the flu', and see if they are putting their money where their mouths are.

My pantry and ammo shelves were stocked long ago. This is less than the annual flu. But, “we” try to predict the next annual flu, develop a shot for it, and suggest those susceptible to flu get the shot.

Wuhan virus is unknown, so no shot. And new and unusual, and scary. Particularly to the masses of people that just looked up from Snapchat and Tictoc and said “WTF? I gotta get TP.”