I suppose it depends on how long they track.

USA has a population of 327 million. If 20% get covid (65 million) and if covid has a 2% mortality rate we end up with 1.3 million.

I suppose it depends on how long they track.

USA has a population of 327 million. If 20% get covid (65 million) and if covid has a 2% mortality rate we end up with 1.3 million.

Do you guys understand the significance of the ventilators? As the numbers have proven out, approximately 5% of those who are infected wind up in an ICU and require a ventilator to breathe. You go on one of those when you are no longer able to breathe for yourself. You are on life support and without a ventilator breathing for you, you are dead. It requires not only the machine, but an attendant running it to constantly adjust it to your needs. And even with the ventilators, it seems about 1 in 5 die anyway. But without ventilators, best to assume that all 5 die.

So the only number that matters in any of this gets right down to you at the local level. If you are the one who is among the 5% who needs a ventilator, it had better be there when you need it or you die. If your local hospital has 1 ICU bed with ventilator, and trained staff to run it, your community can support about 20 infected persons. More than that, and somebody gets left out.......meaning somebody dies. To summarize.....ratio is 20 infected per 1 ventilator. With that, 1% death loss....without, death rate may soar to 5% or more.

So far, in the US anyway, no place has run out of ventilators where needed....so death rate is still running around 1%. In places like Italy and Spain, they don't......and death rate is about 10% of those infected. Good news is we recognized that early are are taking steps to remediate. Isolation to reduce demand.....cranking up production to increase supply.

So goals on many fronts are........

a. isolate to reduce the rate of infection to the point your local hospital's ICU beds can absorb the flow......aka, "flatten the curve". In general, we are about 2 weeks into this plan and it seems to be working to reduce the rate of infection. The curve does appear to be flattening.

b. make more ventilators........to increase ICU beds to increase capacity. If ratio is 20:1, so if follows that if 1 bed can support 20, 5 beds can support 100.

c. find drugs to slow or kill virus to lesson severity

d. improve and expand testing.......if infection rates are much higher than we think.......then the 1% death loss to infection rate is way off........say 0.1% instead of 1%, then the big death curve isn't coming.......was never as bad as was forecast. ICU bed ratio is still important but 200:1 being far better than 20:1. I would suspect when the virus is better understood and we reach the point where we can handle what comes, call will go out......."let it come......we can handle it".

e. most important test needed now is for antibodies, revealing folks that have been infected and have gotten better. This test needs to be simple, fast and accurate.....along the lines of a pregnancy test. If some of us have been sick without even knowing it, and are not testing positive, assumption is we can go back to work and normal life. That changes everything. If not, then wave hasn't hit yet and we stay the course.

I suppose it depends on how long they track.

USA has a population of 327 million. If 20% get covid (65 million) and if covid has a 2% mortality rate we end up with 1.3 million.

One thing to keep in mind is the fact hat we are all going to get it eventually. Thats how viruses work. Thats how our bodies build immunity to viruses. Unless of course a vaccine is available first. If Covid really is as contagious as it seems, and if the timeline for a vaccine is right, the chances of it working its way through the population before a vaccine is available is quite high. Luckily the vast majority of people have very mild symptoms.

Could you please give a direction as to where one could find a link to that article about the doctor.

Yea and IF it has a mortality rate of 4% then 2.6 million will die. easy to plug in "if" numbers . That's one of the big problems !!!