anyone have a sense of what the fatality rate for covid19 would be *without* modern medical capabilities? the comparisons to spanish flu seem harder to make since that pre-dated ventilators and antibiotics (both dating to 1928) for eg
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there was basically no treatment or cure available for the spanish flu... they only tried to alleviate symptoms. aspirin for fever blogs.cdc.gov/publichealthma
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they did have oxygen and epinephrine though (how does that help pneumonia?)
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the standard stat going around is 80% out of hospital ("mild"), 20% in hospital, 5 % ICU, 2% dead. So somewhere between 5-20% seems likely (working under the assumption that the hospital only helps, which is shaky given nosocomial infections etc)
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so my theory is that with apples to apples comparison, this is actually much worse than the spanish flu
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the only available 'therapy' for the most severe cases is intubation (or if available, ECMO). 50% of these patients still die. So, VERY crude/naive = 2x. It is less clear how many non severe, but critical patients (who are only on oxygen) would die without access to oxy.
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Looking at the difference in deaths each month compared to average of previous few years in countries without robust health systems (Eg Jordan, Ecuador) might provide a way to calculate estimate



