To Ancient Engineer.
Not sure why you picked 1930 as an reference
point, but you made me wonder if I come up with a guesstimate for deaths in USA
So I did a back of the napkin calculation on probably deaths in the US based on China experience from a JAMA ( Journal of American Medical Association) article.
At the writing of the paper, There were 44, 672 confirmed cases. Most in Wuhan. Wuhan has a population of 11 million.
That means that approximately .004 of the population contracted the disease with enough symptoms that they were considered sick.
On the 44,672 who were confirmed, the death rate was 2.3% ( Much higher among older patients. 8% in my age group.
So if we simply expand that to the US with a population of 330 million, we should expect about 1,320,000 confirmed cases.
If we apply the 2.3% death rate that gets us to about 30,000 deaths.
So that is around the death rate from auto deaths in this country for a year.
But the Chinese experience is not yet over. The number of cases is lowering, but there are still new cases ( and new deaths)
And the Chinese took draconian quarantine procedures that are unlikely to be imposed here.
30,000 is probably a reasonable floor for deaths in US. If we work hard at keeping the virus from spreading. If we don't contain it - and our hospitals get swamped - it could be substantially worse.
Just my back of the
envelope calculation. - and I am not a health care professional.
One of my fears ( and should be Gafftapers as well) is that 3.8% of the cases were from health care professionals. That indicates that his wife ( and mine ) are at much greater risk from this disease than the general population.