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Comment by ketamine__ | Hacker News Reader

In what world is a virus that is asymptomatic for 99.9% of the population a clear and present danger to our lives?

That's just not true. The CDC estimates that between 10% and 70% of of cases are asymptomatic with a best estimate of 40%. https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/hcp/planning-scena...

As we saw in Italy and New York, COVID-19 has the potential to overwhelm hospitals. Officially, almost 170,000 Americans have died. NYTimes estimates that COVID-19 already caused over 200,000 deaths by comparing against the expected number of deaths if we weren't in a pandemic. So yes, COVID-19 is a clear and present danger to our lives.

Even the very highest estimates of asymptomatic infection don't put it anywhere near that high, unless you're talking about only the first few days or some such.

> asymptomatic for 99.9% of the population

Source? I didn’t think it was nearly that high.

Yeah, you need to stop spreading misinformation.

This doesn't look like a "99.9% asymptomatic" virus:

https://www.ft.com/content/a2901ce8-5eb7-4633-b89c-cbdf5b386...

And that's one of the MOST conservative media outlets in the world.

> that's one of the MOST conservative media outlets in the world

That is far from true.

https://www.allsides.com/news-source/financial-times-media-b...

https://mediabiasfactcheck.com/financial-times/

Sorry, I meant the traditional definition of "conservative" with regard to media, which is to say ensuring that only unbiased facts are reported as best as possible.

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