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Comment by brenden2 | Hacker News Reader

A lot of people die every year for a lot of reasons. Have a look at the CDC's death statistics[1]. One interesting thing to note is that flu vaccines are widely available and quite affordable, and yet many people die every year from the flu.

Yes, the virus may increase the total number of deaths overall, but my armchair hypothesis is that fear and panic will do more long term damage than the virus itself.

[1]: https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/deaths.htm

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China has a flu every year, their reaction to the current outbreak is vastly different from a flu. That suggests that they consider it a bigger threat than the flu.

The US death rate is about 0.83%. The current raw death rate of COVID-19 is 2.6%. A quadrupling of the US death rate in a year is likely to cause concern. Consider all the concern over the far smaller number of firearm deaths.

we can't yet conclusively determine overall death rate, let alone for the US, of covid-19 (or alternatively speaking, the error bars of our current estmates are very large), so throwing out numbers with decimals insinuates a level of knowledge we don't yet have.

note that we've had single-digit number of deaths (one?) in the US so far.

34K people die of gun violence per year in the US, not a small number. what's insignificant is the number (tens to low hundreds per year) who die in mass shootings or from terrorism in the US.

Aren’t these comparisons a bit like saying that the pipes in Flynt Michigan are already toxic, so what’s another toxin added in to the mix?

Yes, we have zero deaths in America today. But like the grains of rice on the chessboard in the old fable, exponential growth can take people by surprise.

not at all. the point is that we really don't know enough yet to draw definitive conclusions either way, and it's erroneous to make (strong) assertions otherwise.

a reasonable response for individuals is to keep monitoring the situation and taking basic precautions (e.g., washing hands) but not becoming paranoid/spreading paranoia.

if you live with elderly or immune-compromised people, you might be a little more cautious, but there's no need to barricade yourself in your house with a stockpile of n95 masks at this point.

(btw, 1 american death was reported this morning)

If this was a new strand of the flu then I could understand what you are saying, but now we will have the flu which as you said many people die from, and we will have a new virus (nobody has immunity to) which many people will die as well, especially once this virus fully spreads across the globe.

Now I don't think extreme panic is a good, but fear on a certain level could help. I am in a major city and I have seen a lot better hygiene practices from civilians and businesses in the last couple of weeks.

You sound just like this super spreader missionary who shouted "It's not a big deal, we are all going to heaven."

I’m a bit bored of these ‘it’s just flu’ arguments.

Even though not everyone is vaccinated, flu vaccine does a good job of preventing flu going too far through the population. People are immunised against it and that helps stop it spread.

Also, even at the bottom end of fatality rate it’s 10X deadlier then flu.

I’m also bored of people saying it is OK because it only effects old people - so you don’t have any old people you care about?

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