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I'm confused why there is still so much fear and abnormal life in the US when the US CDC says the mortality rate is miniscule, e.g. [1]. We're not completely ba

I'm confused why there is still so much fear and abnormal life in the US when the US CDC says the mortality rate is miniscule, e.g. [1]. We're not completely back to normal yet in Vietnam, but a lot closer. [1] https://reason.com/2020/05/24/the-cdcs-new-best-estimate-implies-a-covid-19-infection-fatality-rate-below-0-3/ https://reason.com/2020/05/24/the-cdcs-new-best-estimate-imp...

paxys 6y ago
1. There isn't much trust in what the government is saying at the moment, especially since their communication is usually mismanaged, incorrect or contradictory. For example, some states have passed laws/orders blocking the public release of COVID data. 2. People are also afraid of simply getting COVID, not just dying from it. It has been shown to cause permanent health issues even in young people.
- hartator 6y ago
  > It has been shown to cause permanent health issues even in young people. Can you point to a study showing that?
  - celticninja 6y ago
    Not OP but a quick Google search found this. I have also read plenty of articles of a similar nature. It doesn't take much work to find a reputable source for this type of information. https://www.hopkinsmedicine.org/health/conditions-and-diseases/coronavirus/what-coronavirus-does-to-the-lungs https://www.hopkinsmedicine.org/health/conditions-and-diseas...
    - djsumdog 6y ago
      Nothing in this suggest any permanent damage > Even after the disease has passed, lung injury may result in breathing difficulties that might take months to improve. You know what that's called? Pneumonia! All pneumonias cause that type of injury and take months to recover from.
      - celticninja 6y ago
        Long term may be a better description than permanent. But we don't know and won't know for a while what long term complications are caused. Look at HIV, you get a cold and then nothing maybe for years, then everything falls to pieces. It may not be as severe as HIV and it may be more severe than pneumonia. Why do you want to take that risk when you can avoid it with some simple precautions? If it turns out that these aren't permanent then you can go and catch it next year, no need to rush in now is there.
        hartator 6y ago
        Same thing can be say with every coronaviruses and every flus though.
  - djsumdog 6y ago
    It really has not at all. How can we show "permanent" issues for something less than half a year old? Anyone who's had pneumonia before knows it causes a lot of upfront damage. I had it back in University and it took a week before I could get out of bed and nearly a month before my lungs didn't feel like bricks. I was still coughing for 2~3 months after. Today I am 100% recovered. Everything I've seen in the fear-mongering "permanent damage" news articles looks to be the same effects as any non-covid pneumonia. We won't KNOW if any of this is permanent until March 2021, but I think it's highly unlikely. But it's important to note, permanent damage is literally impossible to determine right now. Simply not enough time has passed.
  - brewdad 6y ago
    You can use Google. It's not hard to find. As for true studies, there probably aren't any. We're talking about a virus that has only been known about for less than a year. The horrific death totals early on have completely skewed people's opinions of the severity of this disease. It's not a binary live/die, there are all kinds of other complications associated with it and too many people seem to think that spending 3 weeks in the ICU is no big deal because "hey, you survived".
dkdk8283 6y ago
American media is spreading fear in pursuit of views and clicks.
- hartator 6y ago
  And a certain election coming up.
- mahaganapati 6y ago
  Yes it seems so
  - celticninja 6y ago
    This is incredibly disingenuous comment mahaganapati. You have many responses to your initial statement, most of which explain why your simplistic comparison of Vietnam Vs USA is not valid, but you have replied to the one commenter who confirms your own opinion. I hope you read the other responses and understand why I am calling you out on this.
    - mahaganapati 6y ago
      When I made that comment there were not many other replies yet. However I still remain unconvinced that this is not just another product of American hype media.
shawabawa3 6y ago
IFR isn't the whole story. There's evidence that it causes long lasting complications (lung damage, chronic fatigue) as well
- umanwizard 6y ago
  Are there any good quantitative estimates of how common this is?
barkerja 6y ago
We've had nearly 3 million cases with over 130k fatalities. If the numbers are being grossly underreported, then it's certainly possible the mortality rate is < 1%, but given the numbers we have now, our mortality rate is closer to 4.5%.
- dragonwriter 6y ago
  Both infections and deaths are undercounts, the former certainly by much more than the latter.
  - djsumdog 6y ago
    There are a lot of overcounts. People who die of gunshots are COVID-19 deaths if they test positive. A huge number of people have died from secondary effects: being unable to get essential heart surgery, suicide, some people have even died of Malaria because doctors assumed it was COVID and told them to not come in. I was wondering if we were undercounting too, but the more I look at the data, to more it's likely we're overcounting fatalities by a large amount.
    - celticninja 6y ago
      >People who die of gunshots are COVID-19 deaths if they test positive Citation needed, because that sounds like nonsense.
      - nostromo 6y ago
        And yet... it's true. https://www.freedomfoundation.com/washington/washington-health-officials-gunshot-victims-counted-as-covid-19-deaths/ https://www.freedomfoundation.com/washington/washington-heal... “Our (DOH COVID-19) dashboard numbers do include any deaths to a person that has tested positive to COVID-19.” “We don’t always know the cause of death for a death when it is first reported on our dashboard. That is true. Over the course of the outbreak, we have been monitoring and recording the causes of death as we know it. We currently do have some deaths that are being reported that are clearly from other causes. We have about five deaths — less than five deaths — that we know of that are related to obvious other causes. In this case, they are from gunshot wounds.”
pphysch 6y ago
With that very dubious estimate, that's still over a million deaths and millions more occupied ICU beds if everyone in the US got infected (which we are trying hard to do, apparently).
mmm_grayons 6y ago
The elderly have a massive hold on the American political system that outweighs the fraction of the population they represent. They are typically consistent voters, and if you go to a polling place, it will likely be an elderly lady or gentleman running it. Given that they represent they vast majority of casualties, putting them at risk is a political non-starter, even if the most logical realpolitik solution.
- ratfaced-guy 6y ago
  This has been my thought as well for some time now, but a lot of the most strident voices for "control it all costs" seem to be coming from the young (at least online), maybe it's different in real life?
dharmab 6y ago
Severe COVID cases cause permanent disability, ranging from permanent respiratory disability to rendering the patient diabetic. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mIJYfsOyO4M https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mIJYfsOyO4M
- viklove 6y ago
  But not to me, I'm impervious to any disability or death, therefore everyone else should just suck it up
- umanwizard 6y ago
  Anecdotes exist, yes, but is there any data on what the probability of this happening is?
  - dharmab 6y ago
    The link in my comment has no fewer than 13 peer-reviewed sources for you to check out in the description pane.
ryanSrich 6y ago
Abnormal does not even begin to describe it. At least on the West Coast. No one is doing anything, most people remain in their houses all day, every day. The few people I see out are simply buying groceries or going for a walk. A lot of bars and restaurants where I live have SELF ELECTED to re-close even after the county allowed them to open back up under very strict regulations. It's a nightmare. There's really no other way to describe it. Either the West Coast is entirely different from the East Coast or we haven't even begun to realize the economic impact this situation is going to bring. Anything short of a complete collapse will be a miracle.
mrlala 6y ago
(1) Why are you ONLY looking at the fatality rate? I don't have all the links here, but just because you don't die doesn't mean there aren't other serious consequences (especially for people with existing conditions). People are losing their taste/smell etc. There's a lot of unknowns but it doesn't seem like it's that benign. You are treating it as binary either you live or die.. seems like it's more complicated than that. (2) A fatality rate of 0.3% to 0.4% might not seem to bad, but you can't look at that alone. The contagion rate is HUGE compared to other viruses. So while the rate alone might not seem terribly bad, the fact is that with how contagious it is the vast majority of the population will/would have ended up getting it if proper precautions are not taken.
- djsumdog 6y ago
  Because the case rates are almost entirely worthless. They're combining PCR AND antibody tests into the case rates! A lot of people who are finally able to get elective procedures (some which are critical health procedures) are getting tests because everyone is required to now when you go into some hospitals. If they test positive for antibodies, they're counted AS A NEW CASE! That's insane! They may have had it at one time and never even realized it. Even now, the fatality rate is 0.001% for all Americans and it's much lower if you're under 40. This is absolutely, 100%, mass-hysteria. Let us look at the numbers and decide our own risks! Go to the beaches of Indiana or Florida or Texas. 1000s of people have been out there every week for over a month, and there are no massive increases in fatalities. The Texas numbers are skewed because people are coming in for normal accidents, happen to be CoV2 positive, and then suddenly someone in a car wreck in an ICU is now a Covid19 case as part of the "Second wave" bullshit.
  - mrlala 6y ago
    Ok I guess just ignore what I said and spout off random stuff.. great response. >Even now, the fatality rate is 0.001% for all Americans and it's much lower if you're under 40. Uh, 0.001%? Are you dividing like deaths by the full population? Not sure what you are trying to infer from that. Maybe if the country had done nothing in response then looking at the death rate like that after a long time makes some sense.. but that's not the case. Think about it this way. Let's say there is a virus with 100% death rate. It starts killing people, but then we are able to quarantine the people that have it and stop the infection. You would be like.. omg the death rate is only 3 / 330,000,000 it's sooooo low! Well no, it's because we stopped the outbreak early. Are you going to sit here and tell me that locking down a lot of the country for months did nothing to vastly reduce the death rate, and you are going to act like lockdown deathrate = death rate of doing nothing? >Go to the beaches of Indiana or Florida or Texas. 1000s of people have been out there every week for over a month, and there are no massive increases in fatalities It's a beach. Outside. People are not packed right next to each other. It's windy. People bring their own things, they aren't going around constantly touching things other people are, etc. A beach is probably one of the sanest things you can do right now. Have you noticed that since things like bars have opened up now cases are rising like crazy in Florida/Texas because people are packed in breathing the same area and touching all the same stuff? Look- we have LEADING EXPERTS in the fields who basically dedicate their lives toward this kind of virus and what should be done.. but oh you are claiming it's 100% mass-hysteria. I guess you are the smartest person in the world who no one listens too. Must be hard to be you every day.
airstrike 6y ago
The mortality rate so far has been under the assumption that those who need to be hospitalized can be. If everyone catches it at the same time and we can't treat them, the mortality rate is bound to rise significantly.
- djsumdog 6y ago
  Except that none of the hospitals in the US have been overrun. Instead people have died because they couldn't come in for essential surgeries.
  - airstrike 6y ago
    > Except that none of the hospitals in the US have been overrun. ...so far
fred_is_fred 6y ago
Do you have anything more recent? We're about 45 days past that estimate and the fatality rate for people who test positive is holding steady at 4.5% if you divide it out. Clearly that doesn't include anyone who never got tested (and likely people w/o symptoms didn't), so I'd like to see if the CDC still stands by the numbers here from May.
- jwlake 6y ago
  nyc said 21.6% antibody on 6/13. 32k deaths, 8.4M ppl => 1.8% IFR. CFR is much more complicated because policy changes on testing and hospitalization will make cause CFR to bounce around. Anyone argue that's a worse case scenario?
celticninja 6y ago
You can work it out if you read the article. It says the high infection/death rate estimates were based on no interventions and no change of behaviour i.e no voluntary social distancing and working from home. Looking at the reaction to the lockdown, from some sections of US society, it is pretty obvious that without the lockdowns enough people would have made no changes to their behaviour and would therefore contribute to higher infection levels and desths. Further, plenty of employers would not have allowed working from home and would have expected people to attend work or lose their jobs. So infected people, predominantly poorer people, would have had no choice but to work when ill and with the atrocious healthcare system would have been unable to access help even if they didn't have to work. So those huge numbers we saw estimates of at the beginning could easily have been achieved in the US, and possibly still could. Florida saw over 10k cases a day this week. This isn't tailing off or going away, it was slowed. Vietnam had a quick response to the problem, but it also doesn't have the same level of international travellers passing through it so it is easier to contain. The US could have contained it but that means shutting 150 airports, as opposed to Vietnams 3 airports. Vietnam gets about 45k visitors per day, in comparison the US/Mexico border crossing in California/Tijuana has 75k crossing per day. That's one border point and there is also the US/Canada border too. So it is in part because Vietnam handled the pandemic better than the USA, but that was also more easily achieved due to the size and complexity of each nation.
woeirua 6y ago
Even at 0.3% IFR you're still talking about ~700k total fatalities in the US alone, assuming 70% of the population needs to be infected to achieve "herd immunity" without a vaccine. It's premature for anyone, anywhere, to declare victory over the virus at this point because: 1 - there is a very high likelihood that we will have at least one more major global wave of the virus before we get an effective vaccine, 2 - we still do not know how effective said vaccine(s) will be, 3 - it's entirely possible that we will never get an effective vaccine (or it will arrive too late to mitigate most of the damage), at which point the only option will be to let the virus run its course.
- umanwizard 6y ago
  > Even at 0.3% IFR you're still talking about ~700k total fatalities in the US alone Yes, there are a lot of people in the US, so even things with a very tiny chance of killing you will cause large numbers of deaths in absolute terms. On the other hand, to be fair, if you’re considering absolute numbers of deaths, you _also_ have to consider absolute quantities of suffering from the lockdown. Take the probability of a person being thrust into poverty, or developing serious mental health problems, or just spending some of their precious time on earth unable to socialize normally... and multiply that by 300,000,000. There would be many ways of saving 700,000 or more lives that are much less invasive than the current lockdowns, like heavily restricting meat consumption or driving. However, we don’t implement them because the per-capita increase in life expectancy is judged not to be worth the decrease in life quality.
  - woeirua 6y ago
    No one is denying that the lockdowns are having serious repercussions throughout all of society. There will definitely be many unintended deaths from other causes that would not otherwise have happened without Coronavirus. That said, you are just flat out wrong about how many people die in the US from driving and Coronary Heart Disease each year. Together, those two account for ~400k fatalities each year. In the best case scenario, Covid may cause almost double that number in less than 12 months. In the worst case scenario, it could be many times that number. Also, we need to keep in mind that while covid predominately kills the elderly, some younger people will still die from it. CHD pretty much only kills the elderly.
devalgo 6y ago
Why is there this laser focus on Fatality rate as a talking point for anti-mask anti-lockdown types? Is death the only undesirable outcome? Polio had historic mortality rates around 5% in children, would you want your children to catch polio? Would you push for herd immunity for polio and have >60% of the children in the country catch it? It's simply absurd! There are other health risks besides death to consider. How does no one see that? Half of the US seems to think this is just a GLOBAL conspiracy to hurt Donald Trump, like are you dense? You think the entire world would torpedo their economies just for the chance to hurt Trump? These people need help. I am consistently disappointed by the lack of critical thinking in HN comments.
- s1artibartfast 6y ago
  Fatalities is the best data we have, has common definition, and can be used to set policy. Everyone in the US knows that there are other undesirable outcomes besides death, but there is a lack of data on the rates, duration, or importance.
  - devalgo 6y ago
    >Everyone in the US knows that there are other undesirable outcomes besides death You can't really believe that. Maybe a small fraction of the population seems to be aware of this. The rest parrot some version of: "95% of people survive, its just the flu!"
    - s1artibartfast 6y ago
      I really do. Being hospitalized and recovering is an undesirable outcome, and for that matter, so is having pneumonia or the flu like symptoms at home. Nobody denies those outcomes exist. I agree there is a longer list of negative health outcomes, such as chronic fatigue, shortness of breath, diabetes onset, ect. The association of these with covid-19 is less understood in the medical community, and less widely known to the public, and their importance when setting public policy is less clear. It makes sense to focus on fatalities, because while they are not the only negative, it is the most significant, any other outcomes would roughly track with it.
DanBC 6y ago
That number isn't something the CDC have said. The CDC report lists a number of planning 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. The number you're quoting is derived from (but not quoted in) one of the scenarios, which is described: > Scenario 5 represents a current best estimate about viral transmission and disease severity in the United States, with the same caveat: that the parameter values will change as more data become available.
asdff 6y ago
Considering that COVID has killed nearly two Vietnam War's worth of Americans in 7 months and is surging by the day in many areas, I think we could stand to have a bit of fear and spool some things down for now.

paxys 6y ago

1. There isn't much trust in what the government is saying at the moment, especially since their communication is usually mismanaged, incorrect or contradictory. For example, some states have passed laws/orders blocking the public release of COVID data. 2. People are also afraid of simply getting COVID, not just dying from it. It has been shown to cause permanent health issues even in young people.

hartator 6y ago
> It has been shown to cause permanent health issues even in young people. Can you point to a study showing that?
- celticninja 6y ago
  Not OP but a quick Google search found this. I have also read plenty of articles of a similar nature. It doesn't take much work to find a reputable source for this type of information. https://www.hopkinsmedicine.org/health/conditions-and-diseases/coronavirus/what-coronavirus-does-to-the-lungs https://www.hopkinsmedicine.org/health/conditions-and-diseas...
  - djsumdog 6y ago
    Nothing in this suggest any permanent damage > Even after the disease has passed, lung injury may result in breathing difficulties that might take months to improve. You know what that's called? Pneumonia! All pneumonias cause that type of injury and take months to recover from.
    - celticninja 6y ago
      Long term may be a better description than permanent. But we don't know and won't know for a while what long term complications are caused. Look at HIV, you get a cold and then nothing maybe for years, then everything falls to pieces. It may not be as severe as HIV and it may be more severe than pneumonia. Why do you want to take that risk when you can avoid it with some simple precautions? If it turns out that these aren't permanent then you can go and catch it next year, no need to rush in now is there.
      - hartator 6y ago
        Same thing can be say with every coronaviruses and every flus though.
- djsumdog 6y ago
  It really has not at all. How can we show "permanent" issues for something less than half a year old? Anyone who's had pneumonia before knows it causes a lot of upfront damage. I had it back in University and it took a week before I could get out of bed and nearly a month before my lungs didn't feel like bricks. I was still coughing for 2~3 months after. Today I am 100% recovered. Everything I've seen in the fear-mongering "permanent damage" news articles looks to be the same effects as any non-covid pneumonia. We won't KNOW if any of this is permanent until March 2021, but I think it's highly unlikely. But it's important to note, permanent damage is literally impossible to determine right now. Simply not enough time has passed.
- brewdad 6y ago
  You can use Google. It's not hard to find. As for true studies, there probably aren't any. We're talking about a virus that has only been known about for less than a year. The horrific death totals early on have completely skewed people's opinions of the severity of this disease. It's not a binary live/die, there are all kinds of other complications associated with it and too many people seem to think that spending 3 weeks in the ICU is no big deal because "hey, you survived".

dkdk8283 6y ago

American media is spreading fear in pursuit of views and clicks.

hartator 6y ago
And a certain election coming up.
mahaganapati 6y ago
Yes it seems so
- celticninja 6y ago
  This is incredibly disingenuous comment mahaganapati. You have many responses to your initial statement, most of which explain why your simplistic comparison of Vietnam Vs USA is not valid, but you have replied to the one commenter who confirms your own opinion. I hope you read the other responses and understand why I am calling you out on this.
  - mahaganapati 6y ago
    When I made that comment there were not many other replies yet. However I still remain unconvinced that this is not just another product of American hype media.

shawabawa3 6y ago

IFR isn't the whole story. There's evidence that it causes long lasting complications (lung damage, chronic fatigue) as well

umanwizard 6y ago
Are there any good quantitative estimates of how common this is?

barkerja 6y ago

We've had nearly 3 million cases with over 130k fatalities. If the numbers are being grossly underreported, then it's certainly possible the mortality rate is < 1%, but given the numbers we have now, our mortality rate is closer to 4.5%.

dragonwriter 6y ago
Both infections and deaths are undercounts, the former certainly by much more than the latter.
- djsumdog 6y ago
  There are a lot of overcounts. People who die of gunshots are COVID-19 deaths if they test positive. A huge number of people have died from secondary effects: being unable to get essential heart surgery, suicide, some people have even died of Malaria because doctors assumed it was COVID and told them to not come in. I was wondering if we were undercounting too, but the more I look at the data, to more it's likely we're overcounting fatalities by a large amount.
  - celticninja 6y ago
    >People who die of gunshots are COVID-19 deaths if they test positive Citation needed, because that sounds like nonsense.
    - nostromo 6y ago
      And yet... it's true. https://www.freedomfoundation.com/washington/washington-health-officials-gunshot-victims-counted-as-covid-19-deaths/ https://www.freedomfoundation.com/washington/washington-heal... “Our (DOH COVID-19) dashboard numbers do include any deaths to a person that has tested positive to COVID-19.” “We don’t always know the cause of death for a death when it is first reported on our dashboard. That is true. Over the course of the outbreak, we have been monitoring and recording the causes of death as we know it. We currently do have some deaths that are being reported that are clearly from other causes. We have about five deaths — less than five deaths — that we know of that are related to obvious other causes. In this case, they are from gunshot wounds.”

pphysch 6y ago

With that very dubious estimate, that's still over a million deaths and millions more occupied ICU beds if everyone in the US got infected (which we are trying hard to do, apparently).

mmm_grayons 6y ago

The elderly have a massive hold on the American political system that outweighs the fraction of the population they represent. They are typically consistent voters, and if you go to a polling place, it will likely be an elderly lady or gentleman running it. Given that they represent they vast majority of casualties, putting them at risk is a political non-starter, even if the most logical realpolitik solution.

ratfaced-guy 6y ago
This has been my thought as well for some time now, but a lot of the most strident voices for "control it all costs" seem to be coming from the young (at least online), maybe it's different in real life?

dharmab 6y ago

Severe COVID cases cause permanent disability, ranging from permanent respiratory disability to rendering the patient diabetic. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mIJYfsOyO4M https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mIJYfsOyO4M

viklove 6y ago
But not to me, I'm impervious to any disability or death, therefore everyone else should just suck it up
umanwizard 6y ago
Anecdotes exist, yes, but is there any data on what the probability of this happening is?
- dharmab 6y ago
  The link in my comment has no fewer than 13 peer-reviewed sources for you to check out in the description pane.

ryanSrich 6y ago

Abnormal does not even begin to describe it. At least on the West Coast. No one is doing anything, most people remain in their houses all day, every day. The few people I see out are simply buying groceries or going for a walk. A lot of bars and restaurants where I live have SELF ELECTED to re-close even after the county allowed them to open back up under very strict regulations. It's a nightmare. There's really no other way to describe it. Either the West Coast is entirely different from the East Coast or we haven't even begun to realize the economic impact this situation is going to bring. Anything short of a complete collapse will be a miracle.

mrlala 6y ago

(1) Why are you ONLY looking at the fatality rate? I don't have all the links here, but just because you don't die doesn't mean there aren't other serious consequences (especially for people with existing conditions). People are losing their taste/smell etc. There's a lot of unknowns but it doesn't seem like it's that benign. You are treating it as binary either you live or die.. seems like it's more complicated than that. (2) A fatality rate of 0.3% to 0.4% might not seem to bad, but you can't look at that alone. The contagion rate is HUGE compared to other viruses. So while the rate alone might not seem terribly bad, the fact is that with how contagious it is the vast majority of the population will/would have ended up getting it if proper precautions are not taken.

djsumdog 6y ago
Because the case rates are almost entirely worthless. They're combining PCR AND antibody tests into the case rates! A lot of people who are finally able to get elective procedures (some which are critical health procedures) are getting tests because everyone is required to now when you go into some hospitals. If they test positive for antibodies, they're counted AS A NEW CASE! That's insane! They may have had it at one time and never even realized it. Even now, the fatality rate is 0.001% for all Americans and it's much lower if you're under 40. This is absolutely, 100%, mass-hysteria. Let us look at the numbers and decide our own risks! Go to the beaches of Indiana or Florida or Texas. 1000s of people have been out there every week for over a month, and there are no massive increases in fatalities. The Texas numbers are skewed because people are coming in for normal accidents, happen to be CoV2 positive, and then suddenly someone in a car wreck in an ICU is now a Covid19 case as part of the "Second wave" bullshit.
- mrlala 6y ago
  Ok I guess just ignore what I said and spout off random stuff.. great response. >Even now, the fatality rate is 0.001% for all Americans and it's much lower if you're under 40. Uh, 0.001%? Are you dividing like deaths by the full population? Not sure what you are trying to infer from that. Maybe if the country had done nothing in response then looking at the death rate like that after a long time makes some sense.. but that's not the case. Think about it this way. Let's say there is a virus with 100% death rate. It starts killing people, but then we are able to quarantine the people that have it and stop the infection. You would be like.. omg the death rate is only 3 / 330,000,000 it's sooooo low! Well no, it's because we stopped the outbreak early. Are you going to sit here and tell me that locking down a lot of the country for months did nothing to vastly reduce the death rate, and you are going to act like lockdown deathrate = death rate of doing nothing? >Go to the beaches of Indiana or Florida or Texas. 1000s of people have been out there every week for over a month, and there are no massive increases in fatalities It's a beach. Outside. People are not packed right next to each other. It's windy. People bring their own things, they aren't going around constantly touching things other people are, etc. A beach is probably one of the sanest things you can do right now. Have you noticed that since things like bars have opened up now cases are rising like crazy in Florida/Texas because people are packed in breathing the same area and touching all the same stuff? Look- we have LEADING EXPERTS in the fields who basically dedicate their lives toward this kind of virus and what should be done.. but oh you are claiming it's 100% mass-hysteria. I guess you are the smartest person in the world who no one listens too. Must be hard to be you every day.

airstrike 6y ago

The mortality rate so far has been under the assumption that those who need to be hospitalized can be. If everyone catches it at the same time and we can't treat them, the mortality rate is bound to rise significantly.

djsumdog 6y ago
Except that none of the hospitals in the US have been overrun. Instead people have died because they couldn't come in for essential surgeries.
- airstrike 6y ago
  > Except that none of the hospitals in the US have been overrun. ...so far

fred_is_fred 6y ago

Do you have anything more recent? We're about 45 days past that estimate and the fatality rate for people who test positive is holding steady at 4.5% if you divide it out. Clearly that doesn't include anyone who never got tested (and likely people w/o symptoms didn't), so I'd like to see if the CDC still stands by the numbers here from May.

jwlake 6y ago
nyc said 21.6% antibody on 6/13. 32k deaths, 8.4M ppl => 1.8% IFR. CFR is much more complicated because policy changes on testing and hospitalization will make cause CFR to bounce around. Anyone argue that's a worse case scenario?

celticninja 6y ago

You can work it out if you read the article. It says the high infection/death rate estimates were based on no interventions and no change of behaviour i.e no voluntary social distancing and working from home. Looking at the reaction to the lockdown, from some sections of US society, it is pretty obvious that without the lockdowns enough people would have made no changes to their behaviour and would therefore contribute to higher infection levels and desths. Further, plenty of employers would not have allowed working from home and would have expected people to attend work or lose their jobs. So infected people, predominantly poorer people, would have had no choice but to work when ill and with the atrocious healthcare system would have been unable to access help even if they didn't have to work. So those huge numbers we saw estimates of at the beginning could easily have been achieved in the US, and possibly still could. Florida saw over 10k cases a day this week. This isn't tailing off or going away, it was slowed. Vietnam had a quick response to the problem, but it also doesn't have the same level of international travellers passing through it so it is easier to contain. The US could have contained it but that means shutting 150 airports, as opposed to Vietnams 3 airports. Vietnam gets about 45k visitors per day, in comparison the US/Mexico border crossing in California/Tijuana has 75k crossing per day. That's one border point and there is also the US/Canada border too. So it is in part because Vietnam handled the pandemic better than the USA, but that was also more easily achieved due to the size and complexity of each nation.

woeirua 6y ago

Even at 0.3% IFR you're still talking about ~700k total fatalities in the US alone, assuming 70% of the population needs to be infected to achieve "herd immunity" without a vaccine. It's premature for anyone, anywhere, to declare victory over the virus at this point because: 1 - there is a very high likelihood that we will have at least one more major global wave of the virus before we get an effective vaccine, 2 - we still do not know how effective said vaccine(s) will be, 3 - it's entirely possible that we will never get an effective vaccine (or it will arrive too late to mitigate most of the damage), at which point the only option will be to let the virus run its course.

umanwizard 6y ago
> Even at 0.3% IFR you're still talking about ~700k total fatalities in the US alone Yes, there are a lot of people in the US, so even things with a very tiny chance of killing you will cause large numbers of deaths in absolute terms. On the other hand, to be fair, if you’re considering absolute numbers of deaths, you _also_ have to consider absolute quantities of suffering from the lockdown. Take the probability of a person being thrust into poverty, or developing serious mental health problems, or just spending some of their precious time on earth unable to socialize normally... and multiply that by 300,000,000. There would be many ways of saving 700,000 or more lives that are much less invasive than the current lockdowns, like heavily restricting meat consumption or driving. However, we don’t implement them because the per-capita increase in life expectancy is judged not to be worth the decrease in life quality.
- woeirua 6y ago
  No one is denying that the lockdowns are having serious repercussions throughout all of society. There will definitely be many unintended deaths from other causes that would not otherwise have happened without Coronavirus. That said, you are just flat out wrong about how many people die in the US from driving and Coronary Heart Disease each year. Together, those two account for ~400k fatalities each year. In the best case scenario, Covid may cause almost double that number in less than 12 months. In the worst case scenario, it could be many times that number. Also, we need to keep in mind that while covid predominately kills the elderly, some younger people will still die from it. CHD pretty much only kills the elderly.

devalgo 6y ago

Why is there this laser focus on Fatality rate as a talking point for anti-mask anti-lockdown types? Is death the only undesirable outcome? Polio had historic mortality rates around 5% in children, would you want your children to catch polio? Would you push for herd immunity for polio and have >60% of the children in the country catch it? It's simply absurd! There are other health risks besides death to consider. How does no one see that? Half of the US seems to think this is just a GLOBAL conspiracy to hurt Donald Trump, like are you dense? You think the entire world would torpedo their economies just for the chance to hurt Trump? These people need help. I am consistently disappointed by the lack of critical thinking in HN comments.

s1artibartfast 6y ago
Fatalities is the best data we have, has common definition, and can be used to set policy. Everyone in the US knows that there are other undesirable outcomes besides death, but there is a lack of data on the rates, duration, or importance.
- devalgo 6y ago
  >Everyone in the US knows that there are other undesirable outcomes besides death You can't really believe that. Maybe a small fraction of the population seems to be aware of this. The rest parrot some version of: "95% of people survive, its just the flu!"
  - s1artibartfast 6y ago
    I really do. Being hospitalized and recovering is an undesirable outcome, and for that matter, so is having pneumonia or the flu like symptoms at home. Nobody denies those outcomes exist. I agree there is a longer list of negative health outcomes, such as chronic fatigue, shortness of breath, diabetes onset, ect. The association of these with covid-19 is less understood in the medical community, and less widely known to the public, and their importance when setting public policy is less clear. It makes sense to focus on fatalities, because while they are not the only negative, it is the most significant, any other outcomes would roughly track with it.

DanBC 6y ago

That number isn't something the CDC have said. The CDC report lists a number of planning 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. The number you're quoting is derived from (but not quoted in) one of the scenarios, which is described: > Scenario 5 represents a current best estimate about viral transmission and disease severity in the United States, with the same caveat: that the parameter values will change as more data become available.

asdff 6y ago

Considering that COVID has killed nearly two Vietnam War's worth of Americans in 7 months and is surging by the day in many areas, I think we could stand to have a bit of fear and spool some things down for now.