3 ms·

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 immunit

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.
  - umanwizard 6y ago
    I never said “per year”. I am comparing the total lifetime impact of Covid on some cohort of people to the total lifetime impact of other ailments.

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.
- umanwizard 6y ago
  I never said “per year”. I am comparing the total lifetime impact of Covid on some cohort of people to the total lifetime impact of other ailments.