03-22-2020, 09:03 AM
(03-22-2020, 08:08 AM)Mick Wrote: I imagine most of us pay some attention to a web site that tabulates the number of SARS-CoV-2 infections and deaths. I look at the worldometer site:
https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/
If you look at the worldometer site and sort by the far right column, total cases per million people, you can see why it's hitting Italy so hard at 886 cases/million. The USA is only at 73 cases/million, with lots of testing and infections to come. There are seven jurisdictions where the case rate per million is greater than that of Italy; including Liechtenstien (970), Luxembourg (1,070), Andorra (1,139), Vatican City (1,248), Iceland (1,386), Faeroe Islands (1,883) and San Marino (4,715). All European. Interesting.
The last pandemic in the United States, the H1N1 swine flu from 3/09 to 4/10 infected 60.8 million Americans and caused 12,469 deaths, per the CDC:
https://web.archive.org/web/202003181918...demic.html
I don't remember staying home from work, but different times, I guess.
The USA is going to exceed 13,000 deaths. It likely won't be close.
Swine Flu had a fatality rate more in line with traditional flu. So it was not particularly newsworthy. Plus the federal government was a bit more science based at the time with people in key pandemic prevention roles actually working on mitigating the impact of global pandemics.
Korea and Japan are living life today a bit like you remember for the Swine Flu. Prepare. Test early. Test often. Clean obsessively. Work together.
The USA didn't do the same things in Q1 2020, so now we are going to enjoy the Italy-Spain strategy rather than the Korea-Japan one.