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conception

> somewhat more deadly

A magnitude more deadly. Flu's death rate is ~.1%, Covid's is about 2-3%.

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> Covid's is about 2-3%.

0.7% in Israel. Much much less if you exclude terminal cancer, obesity and immunosuppressed transplant recipients.

Right. So, an overwhelming majority of the people who “died from COVID” would have likely passed away in the near future from something unrelated. They just were unfortunate enough to catch COVID in their already incredibly fragile and deteriorating state and end up with COVID listed as their cause of death.

If a person with cancer is hit by a bus, their death is not and should not be attributed to cancer. Likewise, if someone with a critical illness is robbed of their last few months by COVID, then it is correct to attribute their death to COVID.

The logic of "they were going to die anyways" means we might as well change every cause of death to "old age" or "natural causes", because if nothing else gets us, that's how we will all eventually die. But, of course, that would be stupid, and it would make death statistics meaningless - which is why we don't do it for COVID deaths.

> in their already incredibly fragile and deteriorating state

This state is called "dying". Dying people in ECU will develop pneumonia no matter what. If it would not be COVID, it would be their own gum bacteria.

Remember that a third of the US is considered obese[1] and 10.5% of the population is diabetic[2], another common risk factor for covid.

You probably know a lot of people are in those groups.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_obesity_r...

[2] https://www.cdc.gov/diabetes/pdfs/data/statistics/national-d...

That is misinformation. The CDC estimates COVID-19 death rate to be 0.6%. And vaccination cuts that rate close to 0.

https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/cases-updates/burd...

Vaccination is moot as a point.

And even then... ok... COVID is only FIVE times more deadly, not 10.

It's not slightly more.

That is an insane, alarmist claim if I ever saw one. The death rate is absolutely not 2-3%.

What percentage of the population do think has been infected?

To be fair to GP, during the first few months of the pandemic - early to mid 2020 - this was the rate that was used in all publications. Though the rate might currently be known to be lower (or higher for all I know) this is the rate that I remember.

Of cases reported, 2% have died. If you want to go with CDC estimates, it's about .6%, still 5X the flu. If you include all excess death's it's about .7-8%.

Pick your number but COVID <> The Flu.

I can't believe almost a million people have died and people still shrug it off as just the flu.

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