@ilovechloe

All this stuff is mostly my own opinion, of which I stated at the start of my post. I spent, especially ~2 weeks ago dozens upon dozens of hours combing the internet trying to learn all I could. Creating hard links to the hard data was not by goal, just an update on my own thoughts.

That said, I will still try and answer your questions/comment.

Where did the above information come from? Is this information from scientists who have studied the virus, or from some politician or lacky of a politician who is trying to calm community fears?

Probably a mix of both, especially in the US it can be difficult to separate out political rhetoric from just the hard data. I tend to lean more on the data side of things.

The macro view on the data: China's new cases are still dropping, even now after working hard to put people back to work, even bussing them from where people were staying for chinese new year to their places of work. And we still have not seen a spike in new cases. Another week or 2 of this should all but confirm if China has managed to successfully stop the epidemic there, that, at its worse was finding 1000's of new cases a day in just one area of China, (Wuhan.) If it was highly contagious to the point that people were picking up even with super brief/casual contact, things would be far worse. The big data analysis (60,000) cases in wuhan area shows most people got it from direct sustained contact, usually family members that people were caring for, and/or quarantined with.

Princess cruise boat off coast of japan, what did we have there? Yes quarantine, but also, many many people in close constant contact with each other, even after they started initializing quarantine. They also, did not quarantine the staff that was taking care of all the guest on the boat. The crew aboard was still eating at cafeterias together, bunking 4 to a tiny room etc (they had no other choice!) What we learned from princess cruise line is that sustained close contact = bad, even if basic measures such as washing hands and avoiding touching things etc.

Cruise ships have always had problems with outbreaks of viral infections on board. They have made some progress to minimize this but it remains a problem to this day, (especially in a world with covid-19) The newer boats have better air circulation systems, but if you are immunocompromised getting on a cruise boat is always a bad idea, even 6 months ago.

I actually read about the cruise ship industry a couple of years ago, and especially the cheaper cruise lines, can be a bit of a horror story, especially for some of the staff aboard these ships, it does not take much to consider it modern day slavery. If interested I encourage you to read up on it.

I will reserve my judgement on the above until testing gets ramped up, & a decent no. of tests are performed. Testing has been woefully inadequate till now.

I agree, like I said, next few weeks will be informative, but I have read that across the country, 1000's of test have been performed, and they were all done on the most "suspicious" cases. As in, people with travel history, people manifesting symptoms that align, and where possible people that test negative for similar flu strains.

My strategy is to lay low until 90% of the worlds population has become infected, & nearly everybody is immune (providing the virus doesn't mutate again).

Not a bad strategy if you can pull it off. If anything you will make your own small contribution in slowing the spread. The more social voluntary social distancing that occurs the slower and more manageable this spread will be. 90% worldwide infection rate may yet be years off. That is a long time to duck out. Realize right now, 120k or so known cases does not represent even 1% of 1% of the world population. And now people know about it and are actively combating it to slow it down. I have heard top scientist in the field quote 40-70 percent of world population in 1 year.

@Thread @ilovechloe

Pure math here:

If 50% of the world population is infected before widespread vaccine, assuming a world wide 3.6% fatality rate. (Higher in vulnerable countries, lower in countries with better response and medical infrastructure.) - Experts have been quoted saying 40-70% of the world will get infected by this virus at one point.) Think h1n1 like spread, except covid is far more deadly. -

7.8 billion divided by 2 = 3.9 billion Lets round up to 4 billion for ease of numbers.

3.6% of 4 billion? 144 million. Dead, in 1 year. Roughly 20% will need major medical care. That is 800 million people needing intense medical care in the next year. Most of them being elderly or with other complicating medical factors.

Throw in that medical staff also gets sick, reducing capacity of care, and these numbers get frightening, real fast.

We can avert most all of this if worldwide, if people sacrifice their social needs for a few weeks, starting now. No unnecessary traveling, no large gatherings of people in close contact, and most of all, anyone showing any sign of contagious illness, stays home and self quarantine. For the next few weeks we need everyone to take this seriously, and not try to "tough it out" if they fall sick, but instead stay home, self quarantine as much as possible.

I get, giving up concerts, weddings, funerals, conferences, religious gatherings, and other social gatherings suck. But we are way beyond simple inconveniences at this point.

We need to do some uncomfortable work now, even in places that the outbreak is not yet widespread, to avoid a whole lot of heartache and damage later.