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Comment by stingraycharles | Hacker News Reader

All the other, regular preventable things don’t grow exponentially and as rapid as COVID-19 does.

I’m talking about the death toll at the end of the day, not the current death toll. I’m talking about the likely maximum number to ever be infected (roughly herd immunity number) multiplied by the percentage of people that the virus kills. I understand exponential growth. People who have their own opinions are not necessarily suffering from a lack of math knowledge.

And if we follow your premise that this is hysteria and we go back to work how many absolute numbers of people will die vs other causes of preventable death?

Herd immunity would still mean millions of dead people you'd have to step over.

The countries that thought they could go this route did a hard reverse once reality hit them.

That final tally of bodies is a drop in the bucket of 7 billion, as I have already pointed out.

You're comparing millions of death in the US to the world population. It would be more fair to either use the expected number of deaths worldwide if we just continued our business, or compare it to the total population of the US.

My friend, take the number of people who end up dying after herd immunity and compare it to the population that it infected. If it’s more than a drop in the proverbial bucket, then please excuse me.

I see there's no use in arguing, as the same pointless statement gets parroted back each time.

This disease is now the #1 cause of death in America. Nothing like a trifling total; nothing like a drop; nothing like an ignorable fraction. Very, very significant.

Unless and until 2008guy offers up his extended network of friends and family to be consumed by the disease, I think it's safe to assume moral reasoning isn't his/her forte.

Big numerator / bigger denominator doesn't make the numerator go away.

Are you going to atoms in the universe next?

So following this logic lets shut down all hospitals and stop treating all illnesses?

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