THREAD: Mexico’s coronavirus czar @HLGatell told us some surprising things in an interview this week. Among them: He is not convinced the virus is any more lethal than the flu.
wsj.com/articles/senio… via @WSJ
wsj.com/articles/senio… via @WSJ
He also said he expected that while two-thirds of Mexicans will eventually catch the virus, just 0.5% will get sick enough in some way to notice. Of the 0.5% who get sick, eight in ten would be mild cases.
His numbers: 0.5% of 127 million are 635,000 sick, some 95,000 will need hospital care, and an additional 32,000 need intensive care -- over the course of the pandemic.
But if two-thirds of Mexicans eventually get the virus (85 million), and assuming all the patients in intensive care die (32K), it means the mortality rate of Covid is roughly 0.04, far smaller than the flu (roughly 0.1%). He said he wasn’t convinced it was more lethal.
If that’s the case, I asked, why is the world bothering to go in lockdown? He said because the speed of propagation is so fast, it can still overwhelm a health system. Left unchecked, the pandemic could play out in six short weeks in Mexico.
He said his numbers are based on the experience of Wuhan in China and surrounding province of Hubei, where the virus’ attack rate was about 0.1% of the population.
In a prior presentation to Mexico’s Congress, @HLGatell’s assumptions were even more optimistic: an attack rate of 0.2% of the Mexican population.
Several health experts we spoke to warned that China is a poor model for many reasons, including the fact that China can lockdown to stop spread in a way few other democratic countries can.
Another reason China is a poor model: few trust their numbers. In fact, today Wuhan authorities said they raised their previous estimate of the dead by 50%.
One Mexican physician I spoke with says his estimates are far more dire: >1 million in need of intensive care over pandemic. I sincerely hope @HLGatell's estimates are correct. Time will tell.
