To all of those in the "this is all a bunch of hysteria over nothing" camp, you might be right, but there is some really good evidence that you might be wrong. The fact of the matter is that there is a ton of uncertainty in this situation. But the downside of doing nothing and being wrong is catastrophic. There are costs to the measures being taken as well, especially economic ones, but experts in infectious disease around the world are pretty much in agreement that this is a big deal. Again, that doesn't guarantee they are right, but if we are not going to take THEIR advice, who IS gonna provide guidance?
It is true that the majority of individuals who get COVID-19 have fairly mild symptoms (similar to the flu or a cold). But it is also likely true that COVID-19 has a mortality right that is about a couple orders of magnitude higher than influenza (likely around 1 in 100, though hard to pin down because difficult to know how many had it and didn't realize it; influenza has a mortality rate around 1 in 10,000).
COVID-19 is not nearly as deadly as SARS, MERS, Zika, etc. (they had mortality rates between 10-30%). But those viruses did not spread very fast or easily. Flu is such a big problem (10,000s die in the US each year) not because it is so deadly, but because it spreads so fast, and people are infectious before they are even symptomatic. And it spreads primarily through children (those germy little bastards), who are always co-mingling.
This
March 6 WHO Situation Report has a piece on the important differences between Flu and COVID-19. COVID-19 does not spread AS fast as flu, but it is close. People with COVID-19 may be infectious before they are symptomatic, though that is not definite, and it certainly does not seem to be as bad as Flu. However, each person with COVID-19 tends to infect more additional people than each person with the Flu. Each infected COVID-19 individual likely infects between 2-2.5 others. The numbers for Flu tend to be lower, but they are very situation-dependent. The reason COVID-19 is so infectious is because of an incredibly high viral shed rate.
There is no way to stop COVID-19 from spreading through our country. It already has a good foothold, and it is impossible to prevent all interpersonal contact (and as we have seen from this thread, many people are not going to follow the basic Public Health guidelines because they think this is a bunch of millennial bullshit).
What the PH departments are trying to do is to
slow the spread. This will give our Healthcare system the best chance of dealing with the problem effectively. If there is a crush of 100,000 infections in the next month, and 50% of healthcare providers are in quarantine, things will be very bad.
Some estimate that roughly 20-60% of the US population will contract COVID-19. Mortality estimates are around 1-3%. If we take the low end of those estimates, 20% of 330 million people = 66 million. If 1% of those die, that is 660,000 deaths. Even if the mortality rate estimate is off by an order of magnitude, that would be 60,000 deaths, added onto the 20,000 - 50,000 annual deaths that typically occur due to seasonal flu.
So why cancel the NCAA tournament if it only effects the team personnel (68 teams x 25? people per team = 1,700 people)? Because the PH departments are trying to sever as many nodes as possible. Sending students off campus is an obvious one, because you are severing thousands to millions of nodes. But every node severed counts, and they all add up. Playing a game is no worse than going to a restaurant, but I think people are rightfully concerned about refusing to sever those nodes for the purposes of sports/entertainment when we are asking people to sever nodes in others aspects of their lives.
So what if we get to the end of 2020 and
only 5,000 people have died in the US from COVID-19? Do we conclude all the hysteria, the $billions of lost production, was a waste? Again, no way to know. It could be that the measures taken prevented that 5,000 from becoming 50,000? Or it could be that it never would have gotten that bad (current experiences in other countries tend to refute that)? We will likely never know, but there will be the ability to compare between countries and their respective preventative measures.
The individual risk to any one of you is small, so don't live your life in anxiety and panic. But the public risk is real, and we can take responsible and straightforward steps to minimize it. Take care everyone.