So amid the information about infections, I've been most interested in cases in populations least at risk for death and/or serious symptoms. There was an earlier account of a man in China who had gotten re-infected but I found no details on that case. Now there is one out of
Hong Kong. While many reports and commentary obfuscate the important details the details, The Ghost doesn't deal in sensationalism. Here's a key point about that woman:
Authorities earlier said a 31-year-old evacuee from the quarantined Diamond Princess cruise ship was first infected on February 18 while aboard, but later appeared to recover in a hospital in Japan
She tested negative on March 4 and 6 in the country, before returning to Hong Kong on All Nippon Airways flight NH811 on March 7.
On Monday, she was found to be still infected at Queen Mary Hospital in Pok Fu Lam.
At a regular press conference, Dr Chuang Shuk-kwan, head of the communicable diseases branch under the Centre for Health Protection, said the woman had a chronic illness with a weak immune system, and could have been carrying the virus for a prolonged period.
So two important things stand out to me about this case:
1) Generally, the people most in danger are those who are already sick and the very elderly. Not that you want to get it, but most people who get it will recover. We'll get back to that.
2) The idea that she was a carrier for quite some time. I have had a long standing (relatively speaking) idea that the virus has been in circulation in the US, particularly major coastal cities with large international populations and points of entry. I believe that it's been in the US since at least December. This based on other readings out of China. I believe a large number of people have been infected, got sick, toughed it out and got better. In their incubation periods they infected other people and, if the above report is to believed, infected people even after they thought they got better.
The other thing is that I have thought that this virus, if it has been in circulation AND is as infectious as it seems to be, that it may be like HPV. Human Papiloma Virus is carried by at least half the population in the US. Most people are asymptomatic but do pass it on. A few people get cancers like cervical cancer and oral cancer relatively late in life due to this virus. I saw someone comment that "experts" say that 70 million people in Italy may get infected. That would be half the population and in line with my hypothesis. We shall see. If it IS like HPV in that people walk around with it without any impact on their health then that could be a good thing and will make claims on "x number infected" far less "scary".
Now going back to my first point I present a chart from the bottom of the linked article as of this writing:
55% of those infected have recovered. 3% of the infected have died. So if you get infected you have a 97% chance of NOT dying. Some 42% of the odds being "in recovery" or "in treatment". Those are very good odds. Also since a patient cannot be in recovery or treatment indefinitely one of two things has to happen. Either the recovered percentage goes up or the deaths go up
What does that mean for the general US population? Well there are approximately 330million people so at a 3% mortality rate you have a chance of 9 million dead. That's a lot of people indeed. Normal US deaths are 2,813,503 so you're talking ~4x more registered deaths than normal if the math holds up. Of course that number won't be 4x because that 2.8 million includes deaths from all causes.
