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> Yeah let's get all the young people infected, having one percent of that population die is fine right?

Are you really claiming with a straight face that the chance of a young person who gets infected dying is 1/100?

Would love to see you try to provide a source for that...

Are we really going to split hairs over what the exact percentage is or can we talk about the point? To me it seems like crazy talk to pose something, which would cause millions of deaths, to be unbelievable not to do. I'd be much more interested in how they think this could possibly work in a safe manner than debating whether it causes 5 per thousand or 10 per thousand (a sibling comment said 0.63%, so 6.3 million among the billion young people we have). Something something straight face.

You’re probably two orders of magnitude off. Not exactly splitting hairs. (Sibling comment is talking about CFR, not IFR.) Any conclusions you might reach based on that kind of exaggeration of the risk are pretty meaningless.

The IFR of Covid is closer to 0.5% than to 1%. That is something we are perfectly used to: For example, Australia had a death rate of 0.63% in 2019.[1] Of course having anyone die isn't "fine". But the death of less than 1% of the population is something we can tolerate, not some kind of disaster of unprecedented magnitude worth a lockdown causing damage we can't even foresee yet.

[1] https://www.abs.gov.au/statistics/people/population/deaths-a...

CDC's survival percentage based on the IFR per age group

0-19----99.997%

20-49---99.98%

50-69---99.5%

70+-----94.6%

That number looks accurate, but I'm not sure it's the only thing to look at.

First, deaths aren't the only measure. For every death there are many more people that just barely survive after a hospital stay, and data suggests a significant amount of those people will have long-term problems.

Second, if the hospitals are overloaded by such people (even if most of them survive) then the IFR of Covid can rise higher than 0.5-1%.

> First, deaths aren't the only measure. For every death there are many more people that just barely survive after a hospital stay, and data suggests a significant amount of those people will have long-term problems.

...where long-term means a few months at most. People do recover, just uncomfortably slowly.

> Second, if the hospitals are overloaded by such people (even if most of them survive) then the IFR of Covid can rise higher than 0.5-1%.

I'm not so sure about that. These IFR estimates haven't changed much since spring, when half of those hospitalized died.[1,2,3] Our treatment methods have improved since then. If the estimates reflected the IFR with treatment, they would be lower today. So I think an IFR of 0.5-1% is actually the worst case.

Unfortunately, I haven't been able to find any source explicitly comparing death rates with vs without treatment.

[1] https://www.thelancet.com/journals/laninf/article/PIIS1473-3...

[2] https://in.dental-tribune.com/news/new-estimate-by-the-cdc-b...

[3] https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/32234121/

No, the current IFR of about 1% is the best case with current treatment options. It was much higher earlier on.

No the current IFR is significantly less than 1%.

https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/hcp/planning-scena...

Those are not real IFRs, those are estimates used for planning scenarios. Also, they don't include anyone over the age of 80.

> The parameters in the scenarios:

> Are estimates intended to support public health preparedness and planning.

> Are not predictions of the expected effects of COVID-19.

> Do not reflect the impact of any behavioral changes, social distancing, or other interventions.

> Those are not real IFRs, those are estimates used for planning scenarios.

Estimates are the realest thing we have.

> Do not reflect the impact of any behavioral changes, social distancing, or other interventions.

How would these things affect the IFR negatively?

Do you have source for that? I think you're confusing the IFR and the CFR.

> You can find a new job next year and live on government benefits in the meantime

The problem with that kind of thinking is it doesn't account for how the government gets money, which generally taxes on stuff being produced. If you don't produce stuff, you cannot redistribute it. There's no magic "the government takes care of it, we can all stay home forever" concept.

Increased government spending now means increased taxes tomorrow, that ought to be obvious.

Increased government spending now means greater national debt. Governments get money by printing it. They get revenue by taxation. They can borrow by issuing debt instruments.

A recovering economy and greater economic activity leads to greater tax revenue without necessarily increasing taxation rates.

This is a natural "budget stabilizer" effect that happens during recessions and expansions.

Debt funding is currently at historically low, almost zero/negative rates. Australia's debt-to-GDP is relatively low (42% prior to the current recession), our debt ratings are AAA.

> Increased government spending now means greater national debt. Governments get money by printing it. They get revenue by taxation. They can borrow by issuing debt instruments.

That's just a path for hyper inflation when no increased production is included. Money is a placeholder for value. If you don't create value and print money, the money doesn't magically create the stuff that gives it value.

It might not ruin a country, but I very much dislike this "whatever, the state can pay" hand-waving that just assumes the products magically appear if you just increase the money supply. There's no perpetual money machine, you can't just spend a billion as a state and generate 1.2bn in taxes, rinse & repeat.

I dunno. The US seems like a case study in this stuff. Large deficits every year, and even the more Conservative party is willing to pass a huge tax cut and nobody blinks an eye. The connection between income and spending appears to have been completely severed. And some people have been predicting hyperinflation for at least 40 years now.