That is actually one of the many problems that we don’t know how many people died because of the coronavirus as dead people aren’t tested for the virus. So there is a good chance that a significant number of flu deaths might have been coronavirus deaths
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I don’t know about “significant” number, but perhaps some fraction. Have you seen or read anything that’s fact-based about this possibility?
(BTW, I corrected the date, I meant 3/8, not 3/18.)
The lack of facts from testing is precisely the reason the counts of infections and deaths are low and the estimates of the mortality rate are high.
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I agree.
This is what I said in my post yesterday:
We don’t know how many people have The Virus in the US, but it’s probably a lot more than the 423 known/presumptive cases as of 3/8 (CDC).
Honkman and I were talking about deaths, not cases, in the more recent posts.
I agree with the LA Times speculation about the significantly higher number of actual cases.
I agree with the Business Insider article.
The WAPO article is speculative, but plausible.
The question that Honkman raised is whether “flu” deaths prior to the announcement of the Wuhan novel coronavirus outbreak, were actually Covid-19 deaths, because I said we “do know” how many Covid-19 deaths there have been in the US.
This is a great explanation of why social distancing is valuable even if it just slows the spread of the virus without reducing the eventual total number of infections.
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Personally, I think this is the only argument for “social distancing”.
I saw this plot and others like it yesterday and wondered if the area under both curves is the same. Well, this plot is schematic, but there was a “tale of two cities” yesterday on one of the news stations that had a similar, actual plot that illustrated how two US cities fared during the 1918 Spanish Flu.
One city didn’t do social distancing. The outbreak lasted for a shorter period of time, but a plot of new cases vs. time had a higher peak, like the red curve in your posted link. The other did social distancing and experienced a longer duration, but there was a lower peak case load, like the gray curve.
The lower peak was valuable because the number of cases at any given time didn’t exceed the capacity of hospitals to treat them. That’s really the only good argument for “spreading out the spread of the virus” by basically canceling life for a period of time. IMHO.
Emglow101 posted a list here on 2/29 listing all of the widespread new viruses going back to SARS in 2004. Except for the four-year gap between SARS and AVIAN, there has been a novel new virus every two years since 2008.
If we were to maintain emergency capacity to treat all that need treatment, and a federal office to maintain a watch on new global threats and respond immediately to a potential pandemic, we could move the bar on the plot higher, and get the outbreak under control in a shorter timeframe. Without closing down our countries, cities, and personal lives.
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Well, as for me, I’m still eating out, eating at Asian restaurants, and mingling in crowds. And I just saw my Chinese dentist.
The only thing we have to fear is fear itself
Social distancing will kill us in a very different way than Covid-19. It will affect all of us and its impact will last long after The Virus of 2019-2020 has faded from memory. The way to deal with this is to up the bar on the coronavirus “cases vs. time” curve that Robert posted, so that there is sufficient medical availability for all who are infected and need care. Think MASH on a national scale. And then deal with it medically and get over it socially as quickly as possible. That’s where the money should go, and right now.
Will COVID-19 go the way of SARS, MERS, Chicken Flu, Swine Flu and so on? Maybe, maybe not. I think what is more likely - since we’re all supposed to eventually be exposed to it - is that we’ll all develop the appropriate antibodies over a season or two, and that we’ll see an effective vaccine hit the market.
Ebola hasn’t really faded from memory and still crops up from time to time but kills fewer and fewer people with each outbreak because the response times are better as are the tools to fight it. Coronaviruses are pretty common. I doubt that it will be eradicated (which I know is not what you said) but I do think as time goes on it may be more mainstream and more treatable earlier on. Remember, this started as a zoonotic transfer. The DNA sequencing is currently showing a 99% match to a coronavirus found in pangolins. You eat far more Asian cuisine than I do, perhaps your body is better equipped to deal with the pangolin strain of coronavirus than mine 
(tongue in cheek Doc)
My speculative mind tells me that COVID-19 is here to stay for a while but that we’ll 1) develop necessary antibodies and 2) get more efficient at dealing with it.
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Thanks for a very well written and logical and factual reply.
MAS*H on a national scale would require a lot of preparation. On a national level, we’ve been going in the opposite direction for several years.
The data is still inconclusive about strength and duration of long-term humoral immunity for the (vast majority) those who survive their initial COVID19 infection. But as this epidemic declares itself, there will be better analysis of this aspect of things.
Most viral zoonotic “jumps” involve mutations of only a very small portion of the viral genome. If the genome mutates too much, then the progeny virion becomes nonviable.
To keep it in the food sphere, is there a dip in the business of the restaurants along Convoy?
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SARS-CoV / SARS vs. SARS-CoV-2 / COVID-19:
The severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) outbreak in 2003 resulted in more than 8000 cases and 800 deaths. SARS was eventually contained by means of syndromic surveillance, prompt isolation of patients, strict enforcement of quarantine of all contacts, and in some areas top-down enforcement of community quarantine. By interrupting all human-to-human transmission, SARS was effectively eradicated. By contrast, by Feb 28, 2020, within a matter of 2 months since the beginning of the outbreak of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19), more than 82 000 confirmed cases of COVID-19 have been reported with more than 2800 deaths. Although there are striking similarities between SARS and COVID-19, the differences in the virus characteristics will ultimately determine whether the same measures for SARS will also be successful for COVID-19. COVID-19 differs from SARS in terms of infectious period, transmissibility, clinical severity, and extent of community spread.
https://www.thelancet.com/journals/laninf/article/PIIS1473-3099(20)30129-8/fulltext
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Don’t even get me started on that one Robert… 
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I agree pretty much with everything you said in your reply. But in that post I was referring to the long-lasting impact of social distancing on all of our lives, which I’m afraid may persist long after there are effective vaccines and treatments for the Covid-19 virus itself. In my lifetime, I don’t recall anything this extreme.
I agree, but hopefully we’ve been shocked into realizing that we need to be prepared for the next one. In 2022? Yes, our national preparedness has been dismantled over the past several years, not fortified.
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I can attest that Orange County alone their is only 50 tests allocated a day.
My source is straight from Infectious Disease Control from hospitals all around Orange County working with CDC.
Oh if you are a nurse or doctor in the recommended PPE you don’t get a test.
It might take a few more (yearly) cycles until a significant number of humans will develop some “resistance” against Covid-19 and the main problem will be that the mutation rate of the virus is unclear yet. In addition your immune response against many virus weakens over time (one of the reasons why we need yearly flu shots). I think this corona virus will be troubling for the world for quite sometime (we also have to see if vaccines development is possible - there are number of different virus where we weren’t able yet to develop any vaccines.) In the short term my biggest hope (beside “radical” social distancing measurements) are repurposing of available drugs, e.g. IL-6 inhibitors, selected HIV drugs etc which make mechanistically most sense
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