Spanish Flu is named after.....lemme think.......Spain. MERS = MidEast Respiratory Syndrome or something like that. When I hear "mideast" well, you know, I think "mideast." Clearly racist.
One of the earlier pandemics was in 1968 -killed a million people- thank you google- and was called the Hong Kong Flu. I am guessing that it was named after Hong Kong.
again....for simpler minds this is hard to understand... It is not the mortality rate...it is the hospitalization and ICU rate that can overwhelm hospitals. People are being told to stay home to avoid the health care system being overrun by people needing beds and ventilators, not because of mortality rates though it still is higher than the flu. This is common sense 99% people understand but yet still evades a few of the naive I guess.
The decrease in new cases will begin in short order. The decrease in new cases is what we need. ---or at least flattening of the curve. Once we see what the actual mortality rate is though, we'll know better whether to hospitalize or treat at home. I anticipate the mortality to be much much lower than people think and thus take pressure off of the system.---Again, the decrease in mortality rate has begun and this is extremely important.
Look..I know you are not stupid so not sure why you are being obtuse on purpose.. U.S. hospitals are on the cusp of too many severely ill patients without enough intensive care unit beds and ventilators to keep those patients breathing. It’s why states, municipalities and businesses are desperately trying to delay new infections through social distancing measures such as school closings and work-from-home mandates. The risk that Covid-19 will overwhelm hospitals in the U.S., much as it did first in Wuhan. China, and then in northern Italy, is driving the extraordinary restrictions on public life taken by states and municipalities: canceling sports events and concerts, closing schools, working from home, and other “social distancing” measures all have the goal of “flattening the curve,” or spreading out Covid-19 cases so they do not hit hospitals like a viral tsunami. Another model from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health suggests that a “moderate” scenario for the coronavirus pandemic, akin to a 1968 flu pandemic, could lead to 1 million people in the US requiring hospitalization this year. A “severe” outbreak would hospitalize 9.6 million people. Social distancing will be a necessity to prevent more severe scenarios. "A little more alarm is needed," said epidemiologist Caroline Buckee of Harvard's T.H. Chan School of Public Health. "We need people to start taking personal responsibility for social distancing right away."
Mortality rate low equals less people being admitted to hospitals for treatment. Right now, we are admitting too many folks as an overreaction.