5 ms·

Every year around 3 or 4 million people die in America from a variety of causes. This is sad, but at some point, everyone has to die. Data is showing that the

Every year around 3 or 4 million people die in America from a variety of causes. This is sad, but at some point, everyone has to die. Data is showing that the infection fatality rate is around 0.5%-1%, and is concentrated in older people. [1] is one study, but there are many others. Given this data, it's clear that our current response is out of proportion with reality. [1] https://www.reddit.com/r/COVID19/comments/g4tqvk/dutch_antibody_study_of_blood_donors_reveals_3/ https://www.reddit.com/r/COVID19/comments/g4tqvk/dutch_antib...

johnnyo 6y ago
So if all of America (330 million) gets infected, and we’ve got a 1% fatality rate, that means deaths (3.3 million) would be up there with all the other things that kill us combined!
- greedo 6y ago
  We hopefully would reach herd immunity far before that point, but even with herd immunity only requiring 70% of Americans to be infected, we're looking at over 2m fatalities. And that's not even counting the hospitalizations that will be over 20M. What we need to hope for is an unlikely vaccine, or a therapeutic treatment to mitigate the worst of the diseases effects.
astrophysician 6y ago
Alright so lets unpack this argument, because (1) this is a pretty extreme oversimplification, and (2) the unstated suggestion you make is to quite literally let millions of people die world-wide who wouldn't have otherwise: > Data is showing that the infection fatality rate is around 0.5%-1%, and is concentrated in older people. right, "old" (65+?) people are going to die anyway, lets just let them die sooner. How much sooner? Years? Decades? Does this really sound like a cogent counterargument to not letting people die? Let's ignore the morality aspect of this, which I don't think is in your favor, to put it mildly. I don't really like people suggesting that millions of people should die because "this is sad, but at some point, everyone has to die." Yikes. But lets pretend we live in a very nauseating reality where older people don't really matter very much. You should still want society shut down to prevent this spreading out of hand because this will easily and thoroughly overwhelm all of our healthcare resources, which will mean hundreds of thousands of people you actually do care about (i.e. non-older people) will also die from lack of medical care either from COVID, pre-existing medical conditions, new medical conditions, etc.
- marcell 6y ago
  There's a bit of gish gallop and vitriol here. First, the .75% mortality rate is a one-time hit. It likely pulls some deaths forward, so the incremental death rate is maybe .5% in a single year. Again, this is terrible, and sad, but we should be mindful and accurate with numbers. Second, people make lots of choices that increase their mortality risk by .5%. For example, lots of people eat at McDonald's on a regular basis, which certainly increases your lifetime mortality risk by .5%. And other people don't exercise at all. 30 minutes of jogging a day will lower your mortality by at least 1%, likely a lot more [1]. But we don't pass laws to force everyone to jog for 30 minutes a day. With the new data, which is showing that mortality rates from covid-19 are not like smallpox 2.0, we should adjust our response to be more in line with responses to comparable risks. [1] https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2019/nov/04/any-amount-of-running-reduces-risk-of-early-death-study-finds https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2019/nov/04/any-amo...
  - erik_seaberg 6y ago
    I can understand risk per time period, but what does "0.5% lifetime mortality risk" mean? Does my lifespan get 0.38 years shorter?
    - marcell 6y ago
      Yes, basically that. Your expected lifespan is lowered by 0.5%, which is around 0.38 years.
  - astrophysician 6y ago
    Again, you realize debating the true value of the fatality rate is a bit silly when we already know healthcare systems will be overwhelmed (and have been overwhelmed already!!) if we hadn’t and don’t continue to manage this with severe measures? Do you agree with that statement? It doesn’t matter what the incremental mortality rate is. It doesn’t matter. We don’t know the true fatality rate, yes, but we do know it’s high enough that without severe restrictions on social life, healthcare systems will be overwhelmed, regardless of whether or not you think 1-2 million people dying from this vs 60,000 flu deaths is a big deal or not. Your argument was that our reaction is disproportionate, but it’s not disproportionate because if we don’t do this, healthcare resources will be overwhelmed and the economic damage could be severe in addition to the loss of life. Are you disagreeing with that?
scott_s 6y ago
As I pointed out elsewhere, you're ignoring that Covid-19 is highly infectious, meaning that lots of people get it. Low fatality rates with wildly infectious diseases still mean lots of people dieing. Of course, as others point out, there's also the enormous strain on the hospital system. Which, I am very curious: are you not aware of what has been going on with the NYC hospitals? Or parts of Italy?

johnnyo 6y ago

So if all of America (330 million) gets infected, and we’ve got a 1% fatality rate, that means deaths (3.3 million) would be up there with all the other things that kill us combined!

greedo 6y ago
We hopefully would reach herd immunity far before that point, but even with herd immunity only requiring 70% of Americans to be infected, we're looking at over 2m fatalities. And that's not even counting the hospitalizations that will be over 20M. What we need to hope for is an unlikely vaccine, or a therapeutic treatment to mitigate the worst of the diseases effects.

astrophysician 6y ago

Alright so lets unpack this argument, because (1) this is a pretty extreme oversimplification, and (2) the unstated suggestion you make is to quite literally let millions of people die world-wide who wouldn't have otherwise: > Data is showing that the infection fatality rate is around 0.5%-1%, and is concentrated in older people. right, "old" (65+?) people are going to die anyway, lets just let them die sooner. How much sooner? Years? Decades? Does this really sound like a cogent counterargument to not letting people die? Let's ignore the morality aspect of this, which I don't think is in your favor, to put it mildly. I don't really like people suggesting that millions of people should die because "this is sad, but at some point, everyone has to die." Yikes. But lets pretend we live in a very nauseating reality where older people don't really matter very much. You should still want society shut down to prevent this spreading out of hand because this will easily and thoroughly overwhelm all of our healthcare resources, which will mean hundreds of thousands of people you actually do care about (i.e. non-older people) will also die from lack of medical care either from COVID, pre-existing medical conditions, new medical conditions, etc.

marcell 6y ago
There's a bit of gish gallop and vitriol here. First, the .75% mortality rate is a one-time hit. It likely pulls some deaths forward, so the incremental death rate is maybe .5% in a single year. Again, this is terrible, and sad, but we should be mindful and accurate with numbers. Second, people make lots of choices that increase their mortality risk by .5%. For example, lots of people eat at McDonald's on a regular basis, which certainly increases your lifetime mortality risk by .5%. And other people don't exercise at all. 30 minutes of jogging a day will lower your mortality by at least 1%, likely a lot more [1]. But we don't pass laws to force everyone to jog for 30 minutes a day. With the new data, which is showing that mortality rates from covid-19 are not like smallpox 2.0, we should adjust our response to be more in line with responses to comparable risks. [1] https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2019/nov/04/any-amount-of-running-reduces-risk-of-early-death-study-finds https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2019/nov/04/any-amo...
- erik_seaberg 6y ago
  I can understand risk per time period, but what does "0.5% lifetime mortality risk" mean? Does my lifespan get 0.38 years shorter?
  - marcell 6y ago
    Yes, basically that. Your expected lifespan is lowered by 0.5%, which is around 0.38 years.
- astrophysician 6y ago
  Again, you realize debating the true value of the fatality rate is a bit silly when we already know healthcare systems will be overwhelmed (and have been overwhelmed already!!) if we hadn’t and don’t continue to manage this with severe measures? Do you agree with that statement? It doesn’t matter what the incremental mortality rate is. It doesn’t matter. We don’t know the true fatality rate, yes, but we do know it’s high enough that without severe restrictions on social life, healthcare systems will be overwhelmed, regardless of whether or not you think 1-2 million people dying from this vs 60,000 flu deaths is a big deal or not. Your argument was that our reaction is disproportionate, but it’s not disproportionate because if we don’t do this, healthcare resources will be overwhelmed and the economic damage could be severe in addition to the loss of life. Are you disagreeing with that?

scott_s 6y ago

As I pointed out elsewhere, you're ignoring that Covid-19 is highly infectious, meaning that lots of people get it. Low fatality rates with wildly infectious diseases still mean lots of people dieing. Of course, as others point out, there's also the enormous strain on the hospital system. Which, I am very curious: are you not aware of what has been going on with the NYC hospitals? Or parts of Italy?