First, let's remember that ten years ago 59 million Americans contracted H1N1, 250,000 were hospitalized, and 12,000 died. Just in the US:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2009_flu_pandemic_in_the_United_States
Remember how the market tanked, sports were cancelled, universities shuttered, toilet paper was out in the stores, borders were sealed, and people were trying to use the panic as a political cudgel?
Oh, wait, none of that happened.
So this thread was started Feb 28, which was two weeks ago. And this flu started in China in December, with actually some rumblings of pneumonia clusters before that, but for ease let's say this started in Mid December, or three months ago. So this pandemic that started three months ago on a planet of 7,000,000,000 people right now has 145,000 cases and 5,400 deaths. Right now (March 13) within the US there are 1629 cases and 41 deaths (mostly from a cluster in an elder home), and the population in the US is about 330,000,000
Now the panic people when presented these numbers, which were even lower two weeks ago, say:
- Carriers can not show symptoms for two weeks, just wait! (the
median time to show symptoms is FOUR days, which means half the people don't even take that long. "Two weeks" is the worse case for a very small fraction of cases at the tail of the curve)
- There are not enough people tested, just wait! (the amount of testing in the US has grown exponentially, but confirmed cases have not grown on nearly the same scale)
- The Ro is much higher than everyone thinks, just wait! (probably, but mixed info on what)
- The death rate is much higher than the flu, just wait! (yes for sure, but claims range from 2x to 10x to even 20x and there are differences, most markedly by age, with hardly any deaths of youths).
Okay, so maybe this is really bad, and we wait. And if the panic people are right, then it is worth the global market panic, losing a ton of money in my 401K, having my kid sent home from college, having to cancel spring break vacation, cancelling business meetings and am now working from home along with my wife for the next two weeks. All sports events are cancelled, even golf of all things. If the zombie apocalypse is around the corner I will give the panic people proper credit for shutting down society and tanking the markets in order to do the right thing with 41 dead Americans about to explode into six figures and overwhelmed hospitals.
But at what point of time, if the numbers don't explode into mass deaths, if people aren't dying in hospital corridors for lack of respirators, if the the death rate is more in line with the Swine Flu which had a "normal" reaction to a new illness, do the a panic people say they are wrong? Ever?
New cases in China and Korea are declining. Korea's death rate is pretty small, even after two more weeks of waiting, and there is not the excuse of "not enough testing" there for their low death rate. Things do seem grim in Italy with their very aged cluster, but by comparison Taiwan which is next door to China with tons of cross visitors has a couple dozen cases and one death. If you look at the breakout by country Italy seems an anomaly, not the norm.
So let's do this - I will check back in on this thread on March 27 and we check the numbers again. And then again two weeks after that, which makes it a month from now. And at that point I either give the panic people credit, or they eat crow. And if I am right, then I get pissed for the panic that destroyed so much global wealth, which will put so many people out of work, which will hurt far more people than the flu.