In general, my attitude about pandemics is strongly informed by how much I loved reading Albert Camus' _The Plague_ as a young person. So, you know, just keep that in the back of your head and assume I am always going to be a lot less prone to panic than pretty much anyone else who has noticed that a pandemic is in progress.
Earlier this heating season, there was a fair amount of loose talk about how it was going to be a bad flu year. I briefly considered getting a flu shot for me and/or my children, however, you are not supposed to get vaccines when you are already sick, and T. had been sick, on and off, since October (a couple rounds of diagnosed strep, lots of antibiotics, nebulizer treatments, etc.). I just could not work up the energy to care enough to go get shots for any of us. A. also was ill (much more briefly), and the rest of us had some kind of persistent respiratory and head cold thing going which was deeply annoying but not incapacitating.
We are all (mostly) better (finally). And now, there is quite a lot of loose talk about the coronovirus outbreak in China. I noticed when I started hearing about middle aged women buying surgical masks and N95 respirators, and then I started looking for news articles and apparently a lot of people have decided to hoard stuff in case the awful makes it here, and the people who actually need the masks to stay safe while treating people in the affected areas can just go fuck right off. I mean, I assume that is what mask buyers are thinking, and if you are buying and hoarding masks in the US and you do not have a compromised immune system yourself or live with and/or care for someone who does, or have a certification as an EMT, first responder, nurse, doctor, midwife, wtf, well, YES I did actually assert bad motive and reprehensible character to you as a person. And I meant it.
Obviously, if you always stock masks, the way everyone stocks TP and food and so forth, that is fine, and if you use them at a certain rate, maybe you could ration yourself a bit until the global need comes back down but you do you -- I am not asserting you are a problem. I am specifically being hostile to people who never normally own masks but are now going out and stocking them by the box.
OK, now that we are through the Do Not Do This part of the exercise, I will proceed to what I said in the subject line.
How bad will this one be?
My sister was a bit concerned, until she got a look at the demographics of the deaths. Once she saw it was predominantly older (and male), she relaxed. She figures that it is disproportionately hard on people who have lungs which are already damaged, such as by smoking. You can look at Chinese smoking demographics; the match looks pretty good actually.
Some years, the flu kills a lot of people. Other years, the flu kills a lot more people. The range is from low end 10s of thousands; the high end is hundreds of thousands. However, a lot of people who have looked hard at what happened in the really bad one (1918) have concluded that it would not have been nearly so bad if people had not been eating aspirin by the handful (oh, it was being prescribed that way by doctors, so, you know, shared blame. And people did not really Get Reye Syndrome until the 1960s, which probably goes a ways to explaining some other bad years).
Quarantining is no longer used for the flu, because ... insert laughter here. I mean, what is the fucking point. By the time you realize that there is a problem, there are a lot too many people wandering around spreading it, and (see hostile remarks about the mask buyers above) enough of those people will evade attempts to control their movements to render a quarantine absolutely pointless. (I have already mentioned Albert Camus.)
I am interested to see the results China gets from their quarantine decisions. We will all learn a lot from these efforts. I mean, if it works, at all, then it will be an indication that at least some stuff moves slowly enough to stop or meaningfully slow, and at least some countries have enough control over their citizenry to make it work. But that is learning that will occur in the future -- we should have an answer to that question around August or so.
In the meantime, attempts to figure out the mortality rate are absolutely pointless. We will not know until the sample population antibody studies are done how many people had this thing and completely failed to notice that they had it. There have been numerous past epidemics which made people look a bit foolish, when estimated mortality went from ... very high percentages to difficult to measure low percentages.
This is so unsatisfying! Obviously, if you are a scientist specializing in the development of new vaccines, this is an exciting time to be alive, potential funding sources are opening up all around to help you pursue your vitally important but generally underappreciated efforts. Of course, it is frustrating, because many people would LOOOOOVE to test your new ideas, and government regulators are peskily getting in the way and insisting on making sure the thing is safe before determining whether it is effective. For the rest of us, it is a great opportunity to flaunt our excellent handwashing habits, and
OK THIS PART I MEAN SO PAY ATTENTION GET LOTS OF SLEEP NOW IS NOT THE TIME TO EXHAUST YOURSELF
generally good habits of self care.
Watch the death count. It will accelerate for weeks until it gets to a total count of at least tens of thousands. That many people die IN THE US every year from the flu. If it starts to approach a hundred thousand dead, and is still accelerating, THAT is a really excellent time to panic, stockpile food and water, and stay home. Cancel vacations at that point matter where they are. Etc. But read that sentence carefully. It has to still be accelerating when it nears or hits 100K to justify panic. People will look at climbing deaths and tell you to panic, when it is decelerating. If you do not remember what these words mean, ask whichever of your kids knows enough to explain to you the difference between the first derivative and the second derivative.
But as long as it it NOT accelerating as it passes a hundred thousand deaths, we are still looking at a typical bad year for the flu type situation, NOT viral End Of the World.
If we do not get anywhere near a hundred thousand, it was not a serious problem at all, and you will all forget it happened unless you are unlucky enough to have been close to one of the victims.
Obviously, it is sad that so many people have gotten sick, and some of them have died. Equally, it is sad that there will be more deaths. Every year, more people die. Because there are more people to die. That perspective can be hard to sustain, but is worth hanging onto, while everyone around you enjoys the hell out of panicking about Viral Armageddon.