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Comment by cjbprime | Hacker News Reader

For what it's worth, I was surprised to see not just that there's age skew in mortality (no children have died) but also age skew in diagnosed infection (far fewer children are reporting symptoms than you'd expect).

Of course, we can still worry about children infecting high-risk groups, etc.

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but how would you know if you have covid-19 if you have symptoms of a common cold and you haven't been exposed to the reported high risk items. Although as it gets more widespread it could come from anywhere.

Will we get to a point where if we have cold like symptoms we are expected to consider the virus and act accordingly?

Well, isn't that the case today with the flu? We always think 'it's just a cold, I'll tough it out', but we could be (and often are) fighting the first symptoms of influenza. Shouldn't we treat it as such, to avoid spreading it to the most at-risk? Influenza is basically as deadly as this new virus, and a much more present danger. But we don't treat it with anywhere near the same degree of caution. Why is that?

- there is at least the possibility that Covid is an order of magnitude more deadly

- there might be more immunity against influenza in the population

- there is a vaccine with some success

- influenza often starts with a high fever so you're less likely to misinterpret it

But who knows, a few more covids and we might become very careful and hygiene conscious every winter and end up limiting influenza, too.

Covid-19 appears to be about ten times as deadly as normal influenza.

Around ten times more deadly, not basically as deadly.

Around 2% mortality for COVID-19 vs. 0.2% mortality for influenza, with a chance that the COVID figure is underreported because many of the people who are not counted as having died are currently seriously ill.

To put things in perspective, the annual mortality rate in the US is 1 in 115 people.

2% mortality for COVID-19 would be 1 in 50 people. So if, hypothetically, everyone in the country got infected over the course of one year, and 2% of them died, the deaths from COVID-19 alone would happen more than twice as fast as we're used to seeing people go.

There are some assumptions and simplifications there, but it helps me get a feel for what a "2% mortality rate" might seem like, given everything else being normal.

Thinking about it this way has really made me appreciate life and the people I've been blessed to know during my time here.

> the annual mortality rate in the US is 1 in 115 people.

Kind off topic, but my brain was wandering. If 1 in 115 people die per year, then you have a 1 in 115 chance of dying per year. Which means your average expected lifetime is 115 years... which is a bit high. But I guess that it's because there are more people being born than die per year and being young (and in a rich country in a modern era), their life expectancy is quite long. Still, I would have expected a higher mortality rate off hand.

You're comparing to different measurements. The ~2.0% figure for Covid-19 is the case fatality rate. Case fatality rate is number of deaths over number of people infected. Mortality rate is deaths over people at risk. A case fatality rate will always be higher (or equal, if everyone in an at risk population gets sick) than the mortality rate for same disease, often considerately higher depending on the disease's infection rate.

Sure, fair point. We don't know if this will spread to the entire population, nor do we know much about the rate it would do so, or if people can develop long term immunity, etc.

But my point wasn't to accurately model mortality, it was to get a feel for what it might be like to lose 2% of people over the course of a year. What might it be like socially, psychologically, spiritually? Most people see "2%" and have no inclination to think "1 in 50". I think it's useful to do this.

That's why I set up the simplified scenario of "100% of of the US getting infected over one year".

I live in a country with - so far - only two reported cases. And I consider us to be at that point. So, I take basic precautions and have done so for weeks.

Of course, we need never reach the point if everyone would act with just a basic level of thought and consideration. Sadly and infuriatingly, hardly anyone does.

They can still get infected and bring it home as well as to the rest of their extended family. And they can still get very ill even if they don't die. I've had pneumonia in the past and I don't wish it on anyone, least of all my kids.

Kids are basically carriers.

Covid-19 reproduction strategy is to use kids as carriers by making sure that kids (and other people with a strong immune system) are not getting too sick when they are infected.

That suggests that Covid-19 is, actually, not as deadly as initial reports suggest. Most likely the number of infected people is heavily underreported.

If number of infected people is underreported 10x, and number of people who died from Covid-19 is reported accurately, then Covid-19 mortality is overeported by 10x.

It is possible that Covid-19 mortality is comparable with mortality of a regular influenza.

(which of course could kill still many millions of people, assuming you mean that the mortality rate is comparable to flu once you're infected, but that the transmissibility is much higher)

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