1. Estimating the IFR is difficult because of difference in populations infected - in the end you need to make an estimate based on the best data possible. The Diamond Princess data was not biased towards the elderly as much it would appear as a large number of the positive case were in the crew who are younger. We also don’t know the true death rate as many cases were lost to follow up.

Even if the IFR turned out to be 0.5% in the end (I hope it is) this is still a lot of dead people.

2. Coronavirus are rather unusual for pathogens in that our immunity to them fades very quickly (less than a year on average) and you can get reinfected again. The question is if SARS-CoV-2 the same. We only have limited data so far, but if you have a look at figure 3 of this pre-print paper [0] you will see the antibody response has faded significantly 60 days post infection.

3. I think it was pretty dramatic in Wuhan, Northern Italy and NYC, but I guess this is one of personal opinion. What is certain is if the number of cases had doubled the system there would have broken down completely.

4. We seem to be in agreement.

5. The reports coming out of Sweden suggest that the economic damage there is just as bad as those countries that went into an official lockdown [1,2]. All Sweden seems to have accomplished is the killing of a large number of elderly Swedes.

Most people are not idiots and they won’t put themselves at risk of getting COVID-19 if they have a choice, but there are enough idiots that won’t self isolate to cause problems. If the economic difference of going into lockdown is the same as not, then why not help idiots not be idiots.

0. https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.04.15.20066407v...

1. https://www.cnbc.com/2020/04/30/coronavirus-sweden-economy-t...

2. https://www.thelocal.se/20200428/swedens-central-bank-leaves...