COVID-19 Virus Update - Mar 12

[dan_s]

The number of active cases in China continues to decline from over 40,000 15 days ago to under 15,000 today, but the number of active cases in Europe and the U.S. continues to rise. My take is that the Western countries aren't releasing patients who have fully recovered because they want to be 100% sure they will not infect others.

Of the confirmed cases in the world, the U.S. has 1,663 of 128,343 (1.296%). We are behind China, Italy, Iran, S Korea, France, Spain and Germany.
Of the active cases in the world the U.S. has 1,611 of 55,299 (2.913%). MY TAKE is that this is only higher because we are being super cautious about releasing people who have totally recovered.

As of 6:44 PM ET on March 12, 2020 per the Johns Hopkins website: https://gisanddata.maps.arcgis.com/apps ... 7b48e9ecf6

128,343 Confirmed Cases
-68,324 Fully Recovered < Healthy people are recovering in 7-10 days with symptoms much like a bad cold.
- 4,720 Deaths
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55,299 Active Cases

Compare to the Swine Flu Pandemic in 2009/2010
60,800,000 Confirmed Case just in the U.S. with over a Billion world wide < Over 1/6 th of the world's populations got the Swine Flu.
274,300 Hospitalized in the U.S.
12,469 Deaths in the U.S.

As of today we've only had 40 deaths in the U.S. from COVID-19 and 31 are people 80+ in nursing homes.

This virus is no match for a healthy human immune system. The death rate base only on "Confirmed Cases" is less than 0.2% in people under 40.

[dan_s]

MY TAKE continues to be that the media hyped up this FEAR so much and politicized it that the government is forced to over-react in an election year. The number of people impacted is sure to increase, but even if 10X more people get COVID-19 it is still a tiny percentage of the population. Our health care system can easily handle 10X the number of active cases that we have today. Remember that a high percentage of the people who get COVID-19 will recover in less than two weeks.

I heard today that plasma taken from people who have recovered can be used to cure other people that are infected. This "cure" could be available in 4-6 weeks.

IMO the FEAR is 100X greater than the reality.

COVID-19 is genetically very close to SARS. SARS totally disappeared by June 30 without a vaccine.