I hate to get involved in topics that look very polarizing (and likely to generate more heat than light), but in this case, I feel like there is something of a group benefit. From everything I've seen, I would say that people should take the Coronavirus pandemic seriously. No need to panic, but certainly not something to ignore either.
To the folks who say it's just the flu, my response is 'I hope that turns out to be correct'. Current cCFRs look like they're around 3%. Actual infection fatality rate looks more likely to be lower, but we don't know how much lower. Best estimates I'm seeing are a range, all of which are worse than the seasonal flu. Moreover, as one person commented, we have no immunity, so we can expect a pretty wide spread.
Our goal as a community should be to flatten the epidemic peak so it doesn't overwhelm healthcare services. To that end, yes, social isolation and increased personal hygiene measures make a lot of sense.
My hope is it is all overblown. My intuition tells me it may not be.
Be safe, be calm, be sensible.
Just my $0.02.
Ok so we're all making a blunder here, we are looking at the overall death rate, and not paying attention to the fact that 80% of deaths from COVID-19 are people over 60 with underlying health conditions. I am assuming most of us here are within 20-55 on this site, and I would imagine most are pretty healthy, so if you take that into consideration if everyone on this site caught the virus, most would just get sick and then get over it. I bet no one or maybe a few die from it. Actually I read somewhere, I would have to look it up again, but based on that the death rate would be significantly less than the flu for those who are healthy with no underlying health problems.
@Dr_SvenPoodiePomPomsAlso younger people can get seriously ill from covid, but you are not wrong that it's mainly a threat in the over-60 age group.
But are you suggesting it doesn't matter if many of them will die? And that many of them will die only because there's no ventilator and no doctor available when hospitals can't cope with the influx of patients? Have a look what's happening in Northern Italy and in Iran right now, and what happened in Wuhan at the peak of the first wave.
Mortality rate may be < 1% with good care, but in Italy it seems more in the area of 6% at the moment. There are no reliable numbers from Iran, but it does look rather horrible from the little information that gets out.
To completely isolate the over-60s from the rest of the population and the virus is not possible. We have to protect our elderly, and the hospital beds they may soon need by social distancing in all age groups, breaking infection chains as much as possible.
It’s called strain 3579 of the flu. End of story.
@Timegod what's called strain 3579 of the flu, convid-19? do you have a citation? you previously said "The flu is a worse threat."
where do you get the assumption that 'most of us' are in the 20-55 range? asks the 73 year old player ---
I'm not writing in fear, but I suspect most people who scoff at the danger are doing so for political reasons --
they don't want it to be true, so they deny it
Hi guys! I was wondering how you would like to join my team:
lichess.org/team/team-battlers. We are a new group and we like doing Team Battles/Team Tournaments.
@Chess_Night5030 in no way is that connected to the topic
Well, people wants to play chess tournaments, so I made a club for it, so, therefore, it is.
I just heard that Lichess is gonna quarantine every E square because of the virus. This changes everything.
Now people will hoard the F3 square.
