Opinions like the common flu kills more people or that only old people are in danger , not only devalue people that have underlying health problems but are wrong too. It's important to stop the virus as soon as possible and i'll explain you why.
First, the common flu kills 1 per thousand people. Corona virus estimated death rate is about 3%.But if you actually see the stats , from the cases that are closed the death rate is as high as 10% .Then compared to common flu's transmission rate of 1.3 ,Coronavirus is estimated 2 to 3. You see that the numbers show that Corona virus is much worse than a common flu.
Another
reasons why Governments need to act without any delay, is because of
how fast the virus spreads and the inability of any health care system
to cope with a sharp increase in demand for
hospital treatment.
Here is a diagram that shows how a no immediate action from
government part's to slow coronavirus spread can break the health care
system
To see how critical is the early detection and slow down of the virus you must see how fast it grows, from the moment it hits 100 cases in couple of days it can grow 10 times , if left unchecked then in one week can go from 1.000 cases to 10.000. It is easy to see why there is a panic, there is no choice to do nothing from that point, it can go from 1.000 to 10.000 and then to 100.000 in no time. Usually the first week,the measures are taken, if they are successful ,you can slow the growth rate from 10 times to 3-5 times in the next week ,then to 2 and eventually control it. Usually the first 2 weeks is a good indicator on where you are going. 2 weeks of slowing down the growth can help you by the 3rd week control it.
A good example is south Korea and a bad example is Italy. Using a logarithmic scale in the diagram can help you see better of what i am talking about. In the following diagrams the vertical axe scale is adjusted so the distance between each line is the same for each multiple of 10.So the distance from 10 to 100 is the same as from 100 to 1.000 and from 1.000 to 10.000 etc.
Using a logarithmic scale, helps you to see the magnitude of exponential growth and how easily the situation can get out of hand. A slope of the line that stays the same, show that the cases are growing at the same rate. A falling slope shows that the virus spread is slowing down. This maybe is not shown in absolute numbers immediately but it is shown on the growth rate. Having the same number of cases as the previous week doesnt seem a success especially when you have more than 10.000 cases but it is a big step on fighting the virus. And that's why it is important to slow it down fast when the numbers are relative low . If the numbers are already high compared to the ability of the national health care system to treat patients and the growth rate isnt slowing down fast,then the tragedy is unavoidable. The key to success is to act fast when the number of cases are low and not delay to take drastic actions. The mistake is that humans have an innate tendency to compare and understand information linearly while the virus expands exponentially.
That's why everyone needs to understand that governments dont overreact when they panic with small number of cases, they see the potentials of the virus to spread fast, if governments or citizens dont co-operate and do what it takes, then the effects can be even bigger than they look. It's false to think that you save the economy by not taking measures, the economy is destroyed even more.As we now see by not making travel bans from China sooner to not damage the economy, the economy has been damaged even worse.
No matter the origin of the virus ,the effects are visible ,and it's not useful now to politicalizing the problem , we all should be united to face it and get rid of it as soon as possible.
You can check daily the new cases by country ,examine the logarithmic graphs and make your own conclusions here https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/
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