Scott Johnson of Power Line has posted a podcast of the Hoover Institution’s Peter Robinson interviewing Stanford Med School’s Dr. Jay Bhattacharya. Bhattacharya did the study of Covid-19 in Santa Clara County. The interview is 42 minutes long and is excellent, I recommend it without reservation.
Understanding that you may not have that much time or interest, I propose to summarize what seemed to me the important findings. First, it appears the death rate from CoV is actually around 1 per 1000 who contract it, not the 1-3 per 100 that has been reported. Thus it has a slightly higher fatality rate than the “regular” influenza.
Nevertheless, CoV is more dangerous than flu because (a) no one has immunity to this new disease, and (b) we have no vaccine to generate immunity without infection. Thus, unlike influenza, just about every person has a chance of contracting the coronavirus. With 1 per 1000 dying, our country of 330 million could see 330,000 CoV deaths.
Drastic measures help with CoV but will cause deaths from other causes. Dr. B points out hospitals are avoiding doing so-called “elective” procedures plus people fear going to hospitals for anything less than immediately life-threatening symptoms. Thus, people with colon cancer who avoid hospital colonoscopies will die because they're diagnosed late, ditto breast cancer and mammograms.
Asked about the chosen "federalist" model of decentralizing decision-making to governors and mayors, Dr. B says it makes total sense as different regions have had widely varying impacts. A "human anthill" (my characterization, not his) like New York City needs much different rules than rural Nebraska, to take two extreme examples.
