Some very solid arguments are made, but when doing number chrunching something to bare in mind.

Not all the millions in your calculation will be infected similtaniously, nor will those that require hospitalization, all require it at the same time.

As infections are spread over time, so will the requirement for hospital beds also be. What the "factor" required for calculation purposes are I will leave up to the "staticians".

On 2020-03-23 09:24:54 Kooni said:
Some very solid arguments are made, but when doing number chrunching something to bare in mind.

Not all the millions in your calculation will be infected similtaniously, nor will those that require hospitalization, all require it at the same time.

As infections are spread over time, so will the requirement for hospital beds also be. What the "factor" required for calculation purposes are I will leave up to the "staticians".

You are totally correct in everything you say.

The epidemiologists statisticians and a plethora of people far clever than me are crunching the numbers, but what is possible or even vaguely probable is really very concerning.

Tegwane. The thing about statistics is that they are only as good as their source material.
The WHO report clearly says the numbers are based on reported cases. Obviously unreported case would change the data but would that change the numbers of dead ?

Either way, if the ultra conservative estimates of a 45% infection rate are used than SA can expect about 25 million cases. If the conservative estimate of the mortality rate is 1% then that is still 2.5 million deaths.

The maths, any way you cut it, is not something that SA can handle. To cope medically the curve in SA will have to be far flatter then any of the European countries just based on what our system can actually do. Those curves are also calculated using the total resources available and don't account for what is available on an average day.
In SA are there ever empty beds in the public hospitals ???

Johnny English.
The Chinese situation was markedly different from Europe. They had the old SARS hospitals and systems mothballed, so they were quick to mobilise those, this gave them a quarantine capacity that no other country has. It also gave them established protocol and methods that were easier to work with.
They also have a population that is given to accepting instructions from the government. Meaning when they were told to stay home, they did. Unlike the UK, EU or US.
They also have a manufacturing capacity that no other nation does, for them to make masks or equipment is easy. the rest of the world is landing up having to buy them, mostly from China since that is where a lot of this kind of thing has gone. So it was cheaper, faster and logistically easy to mobilise.