(03-12-2020, 05:05 PM)Increase Mather Wrote: For Strauss and Howe scholars, it's hard to imagine a situation that illustrates the generational theory more readily. COVID-19 has become a full-blown crisis because society is in the mood to MAKE it a crisis.
This is exactly right. If this had happened in the 90s, the response would have been entirely different. People are freaking out, and desperately want the government to do something about it. I guarantee you that if we have mass forced quarantines, with people unable to leave certain areas, the public will cheer for this.
By the way, the mortality rates that are being quoted for COVID-19 are all exaggerated. They are taking the number of deaths and dividing by the number of confirmed cases... but there are many more actual cases than confirmed cases. Severe cases all end up in the hospital and get confirmed, whereas mild cases frequently don't bother seeing a doctor and nobody knows about them.
In South Korea, where testing is much more widespread, and they're actually catching lots of mild cases of the disease, the mortality rate is being reported as 0.7%. That will probably go down as well, I'm guessing the true mortality rate for this disease is going to be about .5%. Which is 5 times worse than a normal flu, but nothing remotely like the 10-20% mortality rate of the spanish flu.