Bad News:

COVID is not influenza. Questions about the exact fatality rate will linger for months, but it is absolutely clear that the disease and deaths that piled up in China and Italy were far worse than influenza.

Good News:

COVID is not a hurricane. You can’t change the course of a hurricane. But you can absolutely change the course of an epidemic. China and Italy were caught unprepared and responded very late and that’s why it turned into doomsday. Japan, South Korea, and now China have shown that you can bring down the curve of a COVID epidemic through strict social distancing and save many lives. A swift, strong, coordinated public health response can beat COVID before it takes off in a community. But the bug is so transmissible, and testing in the US is so low, the trick is that you have to act before it’s a visible problem. If you wait until it’s a problem, it’s too late. That is why everyone hates public health. Because every time we do our job and avert a disaster, there’s no champagne. There’s just a bunch of angry guys pissed about the government coming in and making a tizzy out of nothing.