That seems roughly consistent with what surveys have shown in other countries. But it still suggests that if the virus had been allowed to spread uncontained, death tolls would be several times what they are now.
Once one starts thinking about indirect deaths, especially those caused by attempts to contain the virus, the picture becomes much murkier. And of course, all of this is being done under circumstances of grave uncertainty.
We'll likely never really know. My guess, though, is that the "lockdown" is probably working against us, at least at this date. And clearly some containment measures, like moving infected people into care homes for the old and disabled, appear in retrospect to have been disastrous.
There's a presumption there that everyone is equally susceptible to the virus at any given viral load. There are likely people whose bodies are inhospitable enough to the virus that it never reaches a titer enough to trigger any sort of test. What percentage of the population is this? 1%? 20%? 60%?
If it were allowed to spread uncontained, death tolls would certainly be higher. But can we really say "several times"? I'm not sure. Maybe, 1x more, on account of if california were as bad as new york. But still, we don't really know.
In the US, it is spreading uncontained, because we don't test and trace in any meaningful way. The question is when do we confront that reality and stop pretending otherwise?
It appears people's acceptance of "flattening the curve" for ventilators has morphed into waiting for a vaccine, which normally takes 18 months.
As I've said before, the US needs to test and trace just nursing homes/hospitals and stop the lockdown otherwise, since the mortality rate for younger people is near zero. The US economy is not setup for tens of millions of long-term unemployed people.
In the case od Newsom's reopening slides, I'd like to see dates attached to each slide instead of non-specific "when adequate testing is available", which may never be true in the US. (By omitting dates, Newsom preserves his White House run at the expense of California residents.)
Several Asian countries csn do 100% of the tests they need because corona was not "uncontained."
The US would need to be able to do 10-50 million tests per day to get there, plus tracing. Hope is not a strategy.
There are roughly 110M people in that age group in the U.S. so that would mean 21000 deaths if the virus would spread as widely throughout the U.S. as it has in NYC (which is estimated to be around 25% of the population).
21000 deaths is not "near zero", nor is the population aged over 45 primarily found in nursing homes.
I'm not sure what your contrived narrative is, but actually it is near zero, far less than several other causes of death. (The annual mortality rate is over 1,000 per 100,000, so 19 per 100,000 is a round-off error.)
"He noted that between January and April in 2018, more than 234,000 people in the United States died of heart disease and nearly 199,000 died of cancer. So far during the coronavirus pandemic, there have been about 16,700 Covid-19 deaths in the United States, according to the latest data from Johns Hopkins University."
https://www.cnn.com/2020/04/10/health/coronavirus-not-leadin...
Even auto deaths are higher at 37,461 in 2016:
"For 2016 specifically, National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) data shows 37,461 people were killed in 34,436 motor vehicle crashes, an average of 102 per day."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motor_vehicle_fatality_rate_in...
There is nothing the US can do to get to zero deaths from corona, so a more pragmatic public health policy is needed than "lock 300 million people down for years."
In any case, these tactics, namely cherry-picking, callousness towards human life, and flippant dismissal of the points of others, make it very hard to have a discussion here. It does not seem like the posts are being made to debate but instead pummel into submission.
Finally, there have been over 100,000 Covid-19 deaths in the US. Each one of them a human who could have not died from Covid-19.
Within age cohorts, COVID’s death rate is approximately the same as the chance of dying from other causes in the next 12 months.
Put another way, you should be less worried about COVID than you are about dying of something else before Jun 2021.
Is that not significant?
It would be around the murder rate in Cincinnati (if all victims were 18-45 and the infection rate was equal to NYC)
I don’t have a narrative - I don’t pretend to know what the best course of action is.
But I am pointing out some of the glaring factual errors repeatedly made by people who are dismissive of the severity of this disease.
In particular, the whole-population rate is <= 0.5%. (International agencies and other governments say 0.5%, the CDC says (1-.3)*.4%).
That includes asymptomatic and undiagnosed people. Case fatality rates only include diagnosed cases. Clearly, if you are diagnosed with the virus, you are more likely to die from it than an asymptomatic person, or a person with minor symptoms that doesn’t bother to call a doctor.
It is true that, at 100% infection rate, it would be the leading cause of death this year. The thing is, it’s a one time hit to life expectancies, so it’s not really comparable to the other risks.
That means it can be the number one cause of death, even though 99.5% of the people that catch it will recover and die of something else.
No. There were 652 confirmed deaths and 129 probably deaths in NYC in the 18-44 age group. If there are 3 million people in that age group in NYC (my estimate, look up if you want the exact number) that gives a confirmed death rate of 21.7 per 100k and confirmed + probable death rate of 27 per 100k. Close enough.
But I'm not going to debate inaccurate corona statistics with a pedant on HN.
The mortality rate for young people is less than 1% - low for a pandemic. Ebola is 50% and up, and recurs every other year.
> it’s a one time hit to life expectancies
For people who actually get acutely sick from corona. I agree the 5% or so of people who get acutely ill will have a shortened lifespan, but there's no data for the other 95%.