I’m not an epidemiologist and don’t know much about past pandemics, but this seems a lot worse than SARS to me. I’m not sure it’s as bad as this article suggests it could be, and am inclined to agree with the caveat towards the end about it having infected far more people than are being identified due to many having only mild symptoms.
I’ve heard that SARS was underreported as well, and I know the SARS mortality rate was about 10%, but still, this seems to be much harder to contain and likely to infect many more people, despite the extreme quarantine efforts. It’s already surpassed SARS in terms of infections and is very close to beating SARS in terms of deaths, with the numbers we currently have, and in a far shorter time period.
I don’t think it’s going to spread as rapidly elsewhere as it has in China, as it seems there was kind of a perfect storm of dense crowds, meal sharing, incentive to cover things up, and lack of early quarantine measures due to the lunar new year. So while I think it’s unlikely to end up being as bad the Spanish flu because those ideal early conditions are no longer in effect, it doesn’t seem entirely crazy to think it could be comparably impactful eventually.
Obviously I hope I’m wrong. And again, I’m not an expert on any of this, so my opinion should be taken as rudimentarily informed speculation. I know very little about the Spanish Flu or the 1968 pandemic, so my ability to make well informed comparisons is limited. It just seems like this has the potential to get a significantly worse before it gets better.
I’ve heard that SARS was underreported as well, and I know the SARS mortality rate was about 10%, but still, this seems to be much harder to contain and likely to infect many more people, despite the extreme quarantine efforts. It’s already surpassed SARS in terms of infections and is very close to beating SARS in terms of deaths, with the numbers we currently have, and in a far shorter time period.
I don’t think it’s going to spread as rapidly elsewhere as it has in China, as it seems there was kind of a perfect storm of dense crowds, meal sharing, incentive to cover things up, and lack of early quarantine measures due to the lunar new year. So while I think it’s unlikely to end up being as bad the Spanish flu because those ideal early conditions are no longer in effect, it doesn’t seem entirely crazy to think it could be comparably impactful eventually.
Obviously I hope I’m wrong. And again, I’m not an expert on any of this, so my opinion should be taken as rudimentarily informed speculation. I know very little about the Spanish Flu or the 1968 pandemic, so my ability to make well informed comparisons is limited. It just seems like this has the potential to get a significantly worse before it gets better.