Coronavirus: Why This is More World War II Than Flu

tl;dr: Projecting how things go if we reopen the country, if we go on about our days like we normally do (like nothing is threatening us), then 2.2+ million Americans could die in the next 6 months or so. If drastic steps are taken (as they seem to be partly being taken in many places) then the death toll instead is much lower, in the thousands.

Two main paths to take, one is we take extraordinary steps to slow down the spread of the virus that causes the disease named Covid-19 (a novel coronavirus), and the other is we don’t. If we slow the spread, then hospitals and the health care system can treat people as they get sick and make them well. If we don’t, then too many people get sick at once to help them all at once, and someone you know dies, possibly 3–8 people you know.

How staying at home and keeping at least 6 feet from others if you must go out helps lower the number of cases of Covid-19 at once.

If hospitals get overwhelmed, then they’d have to choose who to give life saving treatment to. Intensive Care Unit (ICU) beds are not just a normal bed with a heart monitor nearby. There are only 97,776 ICU beds in the US according to the American Hospital Association. It is estimated by some (source PDF at the end of this article) that “81% of… the US population would be infected over the…