The problem really isn’t whether this virus is deadly or not. The problem is it’s contagion, and if we can get healthcare up to speed for the onslaught.

Ebola is widely considered one of the most deadly diseases this side of the turn of the century (wasn’t it like an 80% fatality rate?). But it was easily contained.

COVID-19 is highly contagious, but no where near as deadly. Forget about the hand washing and touching for a sec; hopefully everyone is doing that. Some bad news is beginning to emerge about the aerosol dangers: in other words, it don’t matter if you clean your hands, you may very well be more likely to breathe this in.

And so with the contagion aspect being so widespread and prolific(look how fast the entire world has been touched by this) the problem isn’t that it is untreatable and people can’t be nursed back to health.

The issue is that so many people have been infected all at once, not all of them can be treated effectively, or will receive effective treatment timely.

Here is another way to look at it: You have 500 people infected. Let’s say 80% of them are totally asymptomatic or present with mild symptoms. That still leaves 100 with problems. 20%. Let’s say 80 of those are treated and cared for, and they are mostly older. What happens to the other 20, or roughly 4-5%? They fight for their lives I suppose. Some make it, some dont. But 5 people dying out of 500 (1%) doesn’t seem like a lot I know.

But if half the population (160 million?)as some models predict will be infected within 6-8 months, and 1 percent of them die from this (1.6 million people), that is pretty catastrophic.

The panic is to keep the numbers down as best as we can while the healthcare arm can acquire the capabilities to take care of the amount of sick individuals that will be coming through. Yes some will be turned away. It’s the ones that have a good chance of dying we are trying to prepare to save.