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ILLUSTRATION BY CHRIS PHILPOT. DATA: NATIONAL INSTITUTES OF HEALTH; XU ET AL, INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF ORAL SCIENCE; HOFFMANN ET AL, CELL

now ab ut

he virus?

●It’s quite unlikely that you will die of Covid‑19.

The case fatality rate as tracked by the World Health

Organization officially stands at 3.5%, but that calcu‑

lation misses out on a lot of unreported cases in the

denominator. In South Korea, where testing for

the new coronavirus has been most widespread,

the fatality rate is about 0.7%. Then again, in Italy,

which has also done a lot of testing, it’s 6.2%.

Focusing too much on these estimates, though,

can be an exercise in missing the point. For one

thing, Covid‑19’s fatality rate is much, much higher

for those age 65 and older—who happen to make up

a second‑highest‑in‑the‑world 22.8% of Italy’s popu‑

lation ( Japan is No. 1 at 27.6%), which helps explain

some of that country’s problems. Those with pre‑

existing conditions such as heart disease and diabe‑

tes also face much higher risks than the rest of us.

Perhaps the more important set of statistics to

ponder is that in 1918, an estimated 97.3% of peo‑

ple worldwide and 99.3% of Americans didn’t die

of influenza. Yet that year’s pandemic still killed

more people than any disease outbreak in history.

Maybe, just maybe, the biggest concerns that most

of us should have about Covid‑19 involve not per‑

sonal risk but risks to people we care about and to

society at large.

● Will this overwhelm hospitals?

One key issue is hospital capacity. In the most

severe recent flu season, that of 2017‑18, the Centers

for Disease Control and Prevention estimated that

45 million Americans contracted influenza‑like

illnesses, 810,000 were hospitalized, and 61,000

died. That makes for a fatality rate of 0.14%, five

times lower than even South Korea’s Covid‑19

death rate. Multiply those 2017‑18 flu hospital‑

ization and fatality numbers by five—or 10, or 20,

both of which seem at least conceivable—and it’s

easy to see how the rapid spread of the corona‑

virus could overwhelm U.S. hospitals, which have

924,107 staffed beds total and only 46,500 in med‑

ical intensive care units. If that happens, the fatal‑

ity rate will go up, not just for Covid‑19 but for

other ailments as well. It’s probably no coinci‑

dence that low‑fatality‑rate South Korea has the

world’s second‑most hospital beds per person

( Japan is again No. 1), with more than four times

as many per capita as the U.S.

It’s this prospect of an overwhelmed health‑

care system that has motivated lockdowns in China

and Italy. It has also spurred the intensive efforts

to test and isolate Covid‑19 patients that appear

to have halted the spread of the disease in sev‑

eral East Asian countries. Epidemiologists in the

U.S. seem to be divided on whether it’s still pos‑

sible to stop the spread of the coronavirus here

this way. It’s definitely possible to slow it, though—

which is what the current rash of event cancel‑

lations, college shutdowns, and work‑from‑home

advice is about. Almost all of us are going to sur‑

vive this. The question is whether we can avert a

situation where millions of us don’t. �Justin Fox,

Bloomberg Opinion