Lucifrase,

The people I see who are advocating the herd immunity approach are the money mongers who are more worried about losing wealth than losing lives so I'm assuming that you are one of those.

For me, the herd immunity approach is the first step towards an ultimate extinction event for the human species.

Luciferase "0.37% mortality is the equivalent of a bad flu, but nowhere near the Spanish flu (between 1% and 6%, say ten times greater)."

Here is a list of the worst flu pandemics of the last 100+ years: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Influenza_pandemic

The only flu pandemic worse than this current pandemic in terms of case fatality rate (assuming your 0.37% for our current non-flu pandemic) is the 1918 "Spanish Flu". And its fatality rate as you've pointed out has a very large uncertainly band. But if you take the lower figure you've given (ie. 1%) then 0.37% is within an order of magnitude of this. However, what must be remembered is that the 1918 flu was during WWI when resources where scarce, medical knowledge very limited (they didn't even know what a virus was back then) and the population was very stressed both mentally and physically. The 0.37% of the current corona virus on the other-hand was from a population that is one of the wealthiest and healthiest and with access to the world's best modern helath care technologies/techniques/knowledge.

Also note that the current virus compared to all the other major flu pandemics (besides 1918) is worse. Eg, the Asian flu of 1957/58 had a fatality of < 0.2%.

But there is more to the story than just fatality. As far as we can tell this virus has a higher reproduction rate compared to flues. For most cases of flu the R0 number is less than 1.5 and for bad ones less than 2 but estimates for this virus start at 2 and go up from there. Even a small increase in R makes a large difference in how it spreads and how hard it is to manage/contain/eradicate.

Steelie, avoiding this will require good judgement and community compliance with measures to slow spread. What's your solution?

Mr O, it's not lives versus the economy but is based on acceptance that the virus will exact its price whatever we do to stop it. Do you have a plan to save everybody? Hint, if it's test and track you're too late.

thinkabit, What about SARS, whose R0 wasn't far off CV19's and with ~15%(!) mortality. The infected didn't transmit the virus until several days after symptoms appeared and were at their most infectious only by the tenth day when symptoms were severe. So, isolation of patients was enough to control spread. If cases were infectious before symptoms appeared, or if asymptomatic cases transmitted the virus, the disease would have been like CV19, unstoppable without the lockdown we're in, (or so we're hoping). What's your solution

Is hoping for a vaccine smart? http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/blogs/seeing-the-invisible/india-has-only-one-choice-anders-tegnells-swedish-approach/?fbclid=IwAR2BRyP-RWBGaU40XtE4Qy8CF2bK_5RULddRSBks5tkeppyvUYmx62ju16Q

Luciferase,

It's not my role to come up with a plan.

I am interested in understanding the cause and effect of the Wuhan pandemic and what can be done to prevent this happening again.

The cause of the pandemic is obviously the relationship the world has developed with China over the past 30 years.

The effect is firstly the illness and deaths but in its wake we will see mass poverty as the downturn in global consumerism causes societies and their economies to collapse.

It's only early days so I suggest you hunker down and prepare yourself for what's to come over the next year and expect it might take up to ten years to fix.

But I suppose you are one one those who think it's a simple matter of applying a month or two of the herd immunity approach and the world returns to its pre-Wuhan pandemic state. Do this and expect to see successive waves of epidemics that not only ruins economies but decimates populations.

Following the Black Death plague of Europe in 1347 there were outbreaks across Europe for another 400 years. Is that what you want for the world after the first instance of the Wuhan pandemic?

China used the herd immunity approach in Wuhan but I expect to see smaller outbreaks of the Wuhan virus happening throughout China for a long time, maybe centuries. Which makes me think that China should be in permanent isolation for a long time.

It's not my role to come up with a plan.
Mr Opinion,
That mentality is a trait of an opportunistic fence-sitter !