Worst case scenario estimates *Title edited by MNHQ*

[Ladykluck]

The chief medical officer said 80% of the population are expected to be infected with 1% mortality so they are expecting around 480,000 to die. Although they stopped short of actually saying that number. Just in case anyone missed it. I’m a doctor and the doctors of Europe are screaming at us to shut the country down and BoJo just told us to stay home for a week and not go on a cruise.

The issue is they don't know the death rate because they don't know the infection numbers - they said earlier that they thought there were many more infected already who haven't been diagnosed. Italy will be in the same situation.

I think it was South Korea who did more substantial numbers of tests and identified many more of the mild and asymptomatic cases and their calculations are significantly lower.

We don't know enough to be sure yet - the 1% estimate seems more likely as it's more likely to be underestimating the infections than the deaths.

(I still love seeing Lang's name honoured on Mumsnet)

South Korea’s cases involve a much younger demographic which is part of why their CFR is lower.

Yes it is a realistic figure for the UK.

@Langbannedforsafeguardingkids It may be, but the OP wasn't clear what country it was referring to - that number in the UK isn't what was reported, this figure is referencing the USA which we wanted to be clear about. If the title is inflammatory or misleading, the thread will continue to get lots of reports, and we don't want to shut down a conversation.

@HavenDilemma FFS! As opposed to Labour voters who support terrorists and grooming gangs!
See what I did there!
Don't be so bloody ridiculous!

Hospital beds per 100,000 inhabitants:
EU average: 540
UK: 250

There won't be accurate figures until the whole pandemic/epidemic is history. Who knows how fast there will be a vaccine, or what the infection rate will be among a (mainly) well nourished population of non and ex-smokers. I am sure the largest number of casualties will come from the geriatric population simply because the mortality rate in that cohort is higher anyway. If it is a member of your family, then please accept my condolences, but time waits for no one. All death is sad for the people who loved that individual, but we ALL die sometime, and if the deceased is geriatric... in medical terms, over 70... just mourn your loss.

EU or Europe @Cam77?

Comparison of hospital beds.

Defthand but again, we don't actually know that it did involve a younger demographic as much of that could also be down to testing differences (older people - more likely to be moderate to severe - more likely to be tested in low testing situations)

SK are testing 20,000 per DAY.

It's very difficult to draw conclusions with such different (and often poor) testing protocols

It's not the USA, MNHQ, it's the UK.

In worse case scenario, 80% of 66 million population get it, then 1% death rate means 528,000 deaths.

Angela Merkel thinks 60-70% will get it.

I'm a tapdancer .That is not something a doctor ( GP? Specialist?) would post on Mumsnet because it is unprofessional.

@XingMing Except 70 is a premature death.

ITU beds

@XingMing - the bitter truth is that most of the younger people currently at risk from CV will have a shorter remaining life expectancy than a healthy 70 yo.

One of the experts was asked if the German Chancellors estimate that 60% of the German population would contract corona he replied that they (the UK) were modelling at 80% with a death rate of 1%

All politicians facing the planning requirements for a health crisis on this scale have to consider the worst and best parameters. In all likelihood, the probable outcome is somewhere in the middle. and will vary with the standard of public health, demographics and access to medicine from region to region and country to country.

I'm a logistician, and I don't believe the OP is a doctor of anything but quackery. A snake oil salesperson as they were once dubbed.

The figure of 80% as a worst case, I believe, comes from the percentage needed to build herd immunity. This is just some random slide I found off the internet, I'll try to hunt out something more relevant, but it shows how the percentage needed to build herd immunity is related to the communicability of the virus, its r0.

Currently, we can only have an estimate of the r0 of SARS CoV-2. Its estimated to be somewhere between "the high 1s and the low 2s".

Personally, I'm going to guess that this means 80% is a very high figure, and am going to optimistically plump for something closer to a 55% figure needed for herd immunity.

On this basis, I'd go with

66,440,000 x 0.55 x 0.01 = 365,420 as a ball park figure of my own, before this is through.

In a shipwreck, you may not save everyone. You can try, but you cannot allocate blame if you fail. That's all I have to add.

I have been told by a virologist through my work that 60% is the likely infection rate. Lower than that will only happen with Government intervention.

@XingMing It depends. If a boat has been built without enough life boats of course you can assign blame.

the UK) were modelling at 80% with a death rate of 1%

But the 1% is an average across everyone infected by it.

If you look at percentage by age group it's very low until you get to the elderly when it massively increases, so can you actually work out the percentage of deaths across the population by working out 1% of 80%?

What do the numbers look like if you work it out based on the percentages for each age group? Does that still work out at 500,000?

Okay, found this, here:
[https://academic.oup.com/cid/article/52/7/911/299077]

If vaccination protects only a proportion E among those vaccinated (E standing for effectiveness against infection transmission, in the field), then the critical vaccination coverage level should be Vc=(1− 1/R0)/E.

Let's assume catching the virus gives perfect immunity. That means E=1, and we can simplify the formula to Vc = (1-1/R0)

Let's assume an R0 of 2, and we get Vc = (1 - 1/2) = 1/2

This leads to needing 50% of the population to get the virus before it will start to die out due to herd immunity. That may mean there are still some additional cases after that figure is reached, because there is a difference between a virus trying to get off the ground, and one which already has millions of carriers.

The 1% is an estimate of mortality taking into account the age range in the UK population. The arithmetic has already been done.