Yes we screwed the pooch on testing. However,if we only are testing problematic symptomatic individuals, what's the new measure? I equate that to essentially only looking at the flu in patients that require hospitalization. Maybe medical visits. When you look at the CDC stats at that level, you realize how dangerous is the flu. At the hospitalization level, the flu had a 7.6% mortality rate in 2016/17. At the medical visit level its 0.3% mortality. It also converted about 3.9% of medical vists to hospitalizations. Again, the crux here that hospitalization rate of infected.
With current stats, we're between the medical visit and hospitalization rate. The percent converting in New York is stunningly higher. Where are they though on that curve of testing?
If we only test the sickest, we need to expect much higher numbers and figure out how we determine what is the general population and timeline impact. As you look around the world you see wildly varying stats. Taiwan, Korea, Germany look good, Italy looking bad. We do need to pay attention to other factors though, the flu in Italy is wildly variable, in previous seasons, their mortality rate ranged from on par with the USA to 5x the USA.
At this point, going back to business as usual is foolhardy, however I don't see the USA population hunkering down in status quo until June unless the numbers get really bad. i also expect the acrimony come June to be truly ugly.
