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      03-02-2020, 06:58 PM   #20
weingarm
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I am a physician and deal with questions from my patients about Coronavirus-19 from my patients everyday. I agree with much of the above.

Although COVID-19 is a new virus and not understood as well as seasonal influenza, the statistics still need to be kept in perspective. Let's say 20,000,000 people in the USA get influenza (it's usually more) and the fatality rate is 0.1%. That's 20,000 deaths (predominantly the elderly, very young, and those with comorbid conditions).

Now let's say 500,000 in the USA get COVID-19 (a high estimate given that there's only been 90,000 known cases in the world to this point). I suspect the true fatality rate is closer to 1% than 2% (as many cases of COVID-19 go undiagnosed, recover, and obviously aren't counted in the infected numbers you see reported in the media). This would mean 5,000 deaths (again predominantly the elderly, very young, and those with comorbid conditions).

Therefore, normal healthy individuals SHOULD have a healthy respect for normal infection control practices (frequent hand washing, don't touch your nose/face, cover your mouth/nose when you cough or sneeze) but the current media hysteria is a bit overdone if you consider how influenza is relatively ignored but will likely kill more people.
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