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Comment by BenoitEssiambre | Hacker News Reader

Isn't that just like 2x seasonal flu death numbers? This seems like a very conservative estimate.

This is conservative, but also, this is happening in a very short time frame, AND is taking into account all of the social distancing AND is happening at the same time as flu.

Without the distancing measures we have in place we would be looking at millions of deaths.

Once this is over, it will be very tempting to say, "Look it was only as bad as flu, we shouldn't have trashed the economy just for that..." but that of course is not fair reasoning. We only will have 200k deaths because of the distancing.

But social distancing can make at most order of magnitude difference (generous, semi-arbitrary) - which is still way too small change, it just spreads a lot of deaths in time, doesn't stop all of them, right?

Spreading out cases over time means what might have been a death in a crowded, overworked hospital is a recovery in a moderately challenged hospital where the concerns are fresh face masks rather than available hands.

I know and I don't argue that. I gave 10x less deaths for that, which is generous - but that still means deaths counted in millions.

Wrong. Flattening the curve merely delays infections and does not prevent them. It doesn't seem to work well either. It has been good for a 0.5 R-0 drop which points to other primary vectors instead of aerosols. Also it turns out if you need a ventilator you have a 95% death rate, so if the hospitals get overwhelmed the overall death toll won't be too different. If the death toll is anywhere near 100k total we trashed the economy over a bad flu. It would take 6+ months of isolation to beat the virus with quarantine measures, more than long enough to cause a wave of economic related deaths way higher than the virus. People have to get back to work.

No, you are wrong by confusing number of cases with deaths. Flattening the curve reduces the max number of cases, which reduces hospital overload, which in tun saves lives. Without any intervention we were/are looking at 1M+ deaths:

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/03/13/opinion/coron...

That's a lot of people to condemn to death. Do you have statistics to cite for "Economic related deaths" that you quote?

1M+ deaths is impossible based on .gov's own numbers. Estmated 100-200k dead. The only way a hospital can help is with ventilators. Everyone else gets the exact same treatment at home or not. If we have a 90% death rate on ventilators than in an absolute worse case 'system overwhelmed' scenario there are 10% more deaths. The idea of millions is laughable, but to be expected from political opinion pieces.

CDC estimates that 24k - 62k die every year from the flu.

Fauci estimated 100k - 200k will die from covid-19.

So that would be 2-8x on the extremes. But 2x would be the low end estimate assuming a bad flu season and a low end number for the death rate on covid-19.

Hospitals are optimized for typical illness, not for pandemics. And the death rate has been calculated based upon cases that get adequate health care -- an assumption that goes away when the hospitals have to choose who lives and who dies.

> an assumption that goes away when the hospitals have to choose who lives and who dies.

I feel this sort of statement misrepresents the true problem and portrays deaths from lack of medical care as just a capricious choice made by cruel doctors and nurses. This portrsial is neither fair or truthful.

If you have 10 patients requiring a respirator and only a single respirator to spare, figuring out who is a priority or has a better chance of making it alive is not the same as deciding someone should die.

I think no sufficiently intelligent person thinks that hospitals deciding who lives/dies will be done capriciously or by cruel doctors. But on the other hand there were large numbers of fools in the U.S. who thought the ACA would create death panels. So maybe for the U.S. your point is valid.

> think no sufficiently intelligent person thinks that hospitals deciding who lives/dies will be done capriciously or by cruel doctors.

The death panel political talking point suggests otherwise.

It's reasonable to assume bb88 understands the nature of triage and was referring to that in a non-judgmental way.

To me the statement "have to choose who lives and who dies" doesn't carry the meaning that the decision will be taken in a capricious way. In the end it's a horrible responsibility to decide somebody doesn't get a chance to live so that somebody else gets that chance. But that's the situation.

How would you write that, then?

Someone had mentioned recently that one of HN's biggest problems was overly pedantic responses get better upvotes rather than actual content. This has a caused HN to devolve into a fact correctness engine rather than a content engine. To be fair, this is something I've done in that past too.

Yes, I did use a rhetorical phrase to make a point, but one that's pretty prevalent in modern culture and especially when it comes to triage. Perhaps google phrases like "Doctors forced to play God", etc. Ironically, the first hit that comes up is this: https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8163641/NHS-doctor-...

I really recommend that you go watch episodes of MASH from the 1980's. Particularly the episodes where the doctors have to triage cases that might be savable if they weren't in a field hospital. If the US president says we're in a war, we should all refresh ourselves up on what meatball surgery is during an actual war.

The objection is that the phrasing of a doctor playing God is extremely culturally potent in America, and far less on whether you are technically correct on the intersection of God and medicine.

And in public speech it's the public that determines meaning and not the speaker with their intentions. What the speaker gets to do is make predictions about how it will be received.

And this is exactly the pedantry I was talking about. You're arguing about the "way" I mead the point. Not about the argument itself.

As a public speaker engaged in public speech, you are responsible for getting the results you want. It would be silly for JK Rowling to blame people for not correctly interpreting her novels.

You are absolutely reaping your own fruits, but you are blaming others for your displeasing harvest.

Wow, all I did was use a phrase from popular culture, and now I feel I'm being speech shamed.

Sure, it's language used to discuss doctors in the context of abortion, euthanasia, and medical research relating to genetics. I wonder why people might focus on doctor playing God. Could some people actually be religious?

> in public speech it's the public that determines meaning and not the speaker

False dichotomy. It's a shared responsibility. Nothing gives the reader or responder the right to project their own biases or guesses of intention onto someone else's words and argue as though they'd been in the original. Please stop doing that.

I suppose that is true, if the crisis is impeccably managed from this point onward, we might only see 100k to 200k deaths. On the other hand, if it is not, it wouldn't surprise me to see this level of deaths just in NY state.

True, but flu is spread out over the whole year, and 100k deaths is only 10 million cases, possibly a severe underestimate. We'll be at a million reported cases in a week, or 10 million not long after that.

Edit: Corrected as per below. Thanks!

I'm not sure I understand you statement re: "100,000 deaths is only 1,000,000 cases". That seems an awfully high percentage compared to the recorded numbers so far.

If hospitals get overrun, the total number of deaths that result from this pandemic is bound to be higher.

Half of America is hiding inside taking extra precautions. He’s probably giving us one of the better outcomes. He also said 100,000 to 200,000

If we took more precautions with the flu, the number would be less too. And if people got the flu shot

It's not like the flu tagged covid-19 in. Both are going to cause a lot of deaths at the same time.

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