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Comment by redis_mlc | Hacker News Reader

> But it still suggests that if the virus had been allowed to spread uncontained

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.)

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There we go again. In NYC, 19 out of 100,000 people aged 18-45 died. (1)

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.

1) https://www1.nyc.gov/site/doh/covid/covid-19-data.page

> 21000 deaths is not "near zero"

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."

No, the annual death rate for the age group 18-45 is not 1000, it’s around 150. That is, even in the group of adults least affected by Covid-19, it would be near the top of the list for causes of death. In the most affected group (75+), the casualty rate is nearly 100 times higher.

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.

I suspect you are quoting case fatality rates instead of death rates.

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.

> I suspect you are quoting case fatality rates instead of death rates

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.

Instead of taking shots at people on HN, write a detailed document and add a link - that would be useful.

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%.

How many of those people who died from cancer and heart diseased are aged 18-45? These numbers are largely irrelevant if we dont compare them apples-to-apples with the numbers in their proper cohort.

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.

> These numbers are largely irrelevant if we dont compare them apples-to-apples with the numbers in their proper cohort.

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.

It’s not clear from your description really - Doesn’t that mean your chance of dying has doubled?

Is that not significant?

depends where in the US. for example, testing levels in NY state are extremely meaningful, they've really scaled up to the point that their testing (on a per capita basis) is among the best in the world.

Can you provide some numbers? (I follow SF news, not NY.)

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.

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