Comment by jacobolus | Hacker News Reader

Comment by jacobolus | Hacker News Reader

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> CDC estimates that 45-55% of all Americans had been infected with COVID.

If we take 330 million people as an estimated US population, an IFR of 0.012 and 0.44 of everyone infected (CDC estimate from 1 October), that would be 1.74 million deaths. But the number of Covid deaths in the USA is probably only around 1 million (CDC estimate is 920 thousand as of 1 October), putting the US IFR at ~0.006. https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/cases-updates/burd...

I’d estimate a US IFR somewhere in the 0.004–0.008 range. We missed counting a significant number of Covid deaths, but we didn’t miss 60% of them. (In US counties with the highest proportion of elderly people, the IFR might locally be closer to 0.012.) But that is still a very high IFR!

Covid is a scary, scary disease. Deadly, highly contagious even before symptoms, and indistinguishable from common respiratory diseases during the part of the infection when most spread happens. Fortunately we have extremely effective vaccines (if only we can convince everyone to take them), and spread takes place almost always between unmasked people indoors making it relatively inexpensive to dramatically reduce the reproductive rate of the virus by avoiding indoor spaces and wearing masks when they are inevitable.

“Covid is a scary, scary disease. Deadly, highly contagious even before symptoms…”

Getting really tired of hearing this. To a HEALTHY human, it’s like a bad cold. Me and my family have had it in the last month and confirmed with tests so I know what we had. It’s gone through a bunch of friends too and the worst they experienced was feeling miserable in bed for a couple of days.

I have no doubt that for some it IS scary, but let’s not chuck around emotive language that isn’t an accurate description in the majority of cases.

Thats just wrong. There are more than enough healthy humans for which it is much more than just a bad cold, which end up in the ICU eventually. To my understanding it is not possible to know upfront who is such a human and who is not, even perfectly healthy people have bad outcomes. And yes, I am aware its just a small percentage of people in certain age groups.

Is unknowingly transmitting a disease that could kill someone you love (or even that you don't) without your knowledge not scary to you? Great, you have a healthy family and friends. What happens when one of those friends or family members isn't as healthy as they were the last time they caught covid? Still seems pretty scary to me.

What you may be missing is just how high of a percentage of the population of most western countries are not classed as healthy by any metric. Overweight, unfit, damaged through nicotine or alcohol abuse or even simple naturally occurring diseases where our health systems are able to keep them alive but not make them healthy again.

> In US counties with the highest proportion of elderly people, the IFR might locally be closer to 0.012.)

Yes, I do live in one of these older counties and specifically in my region of the county. Obviously words such as 'scary' are useless and subjective. Anti-biotic-resistant strep nearly killed me 3 years back, so to me, that was a scary disease. The COVID I had was milder than my yearly flu, and this is effect on the overwhelming majority of the population even considering the obesity rate in the US. Scary is not the word I would use.

> But that is still a very high IFR!

I mean, perspective is everything. What are you comparing this IFR to? I consider this a very low IFR, especially when you realize what we in the US classify a "COVID death". We do not count deaths of any other diseases using the same methodology as we have with COVID as far as I'm aware, and I believe this is the primary reason for our inflated mortality vs. most of the rest of the world.

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