[TheBlueMarvel]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Struggler

Maybe there's something I'm missing, but the Spanish flu killed at least 17 million people.

I'm glad that you brought up the Spanish Flu because there are important parallels to make with that contagion. Sadly, just as in the 20's, our current health care system doesn't have enough beds to accommodate an epidemic, let alone qualified professionals to administer care. Add to that the fact that our country (supposing you live here) is far more densely populated than it was back then - 330mil now to the 100mil then.

With 1.3 million cases worldwide and roughly 70k dead, I'll let you do the math to figure out how long it would take to reach Spanish Flu numbers if the virus progresses unabated. Also remember that the Spanish Flu raged for 2-3 years.

We have more than 100k confirmed cases in the US alone and proportionally we are woefully behind nations like South Korea, Japan and Italy with regard to testing. What that means is that we have no clue of the actual numbers of infected, and modest estimates extrapolate the real numbers in the states at roughly 330k currently. [EDIT NOTE: my numbers are off, the actual numbers are worse - confirmed = 300k+ - actual numbers are likely far higher] 4-5 weeks in and we still don't have enough kits to test the 330 million people living in America, which amounts to the most powerful nation in the world flying blind.

Something else that you may, or may not realize is that there are only 900k to 1mil hospital beds available in our healthcare system in totality. It doesn't take much imagination to divine how this could get catastrophic pretty quickly.

I hope that helps to fill in some (I left out lack of PPE and ventilators, among many other hurdles) of the missing details as to why doctors (aka the experts) are very scared. If you're willing to eschew the concerns of front line healthcare providers, then that's on you, don't hate the messenger. Me? I'm taking the EXPERTS at their word...