> I live in Contra Costa County (east bay, SF area), with a lot of retired people. 1.1 million residents. We’ve had 224 deaths with COVID so far. > Does that s

> I live in Contra Costa County (east bay, SF area), with a lot of retired people. 1.1 million residents. We’ve had 224 deaths with COVID so far. > Does that sound like a pandemic? It sounds like a region that has handled the pandemic well. > In the US, death rates are pretty flat (not fluctuating much with cases) Daily deaths are tracking case rates (given, one is best off looking at a combo of case rates, positivity and total testing). Of course, deaths lag a fair bit. > of the 198k deaths in the US, only 16K were younger than 54 years of age. And, we're only around 10% total incidence rate in the US, based on more recent widespread antibody studies. 16K for under 54 is still a fairly large number given that we're only at ~10%. Add in 55-64 and we're at 42K deaths. Let's ramp up to an incidence rate of 50% - super basic napkin math and we'd be at over 200K deaths for the under 65 crowd - as in, entirely people of below retirement age. That's huge. > Is it reasonable to shutter most of our economies for those numbers? We haven't though. Not to downplay the economic impact, but most of the economy is still running. > People are suffering economically and emotionally because of stress and isolation. Yeah, this aspect sucks. A few comments: * Let's imagine we lifted all restrictions. How much do you think that would improve the economy? There's at least some evidence that economies that have failed in mitigation, such that the virus runs pretty close to free, have had the sharpest GDP declines - https://ourworldindata.org/covid-health-economy https://ourworldindata.org/covid-health-economy - granted, it is hard to separate out factors, as countries that have seen huge spread often also will, at least temporarily, lock down more. But, my general comment here is that the virus itself is a significant portion of the economic impact. * The federal government should have done more to keep people afloat during this period. This sort of crisis is exactly when we should have committed to sustained support, e.g. UBI until the pandemic was over. * Beyond that, re isolation, most places in the country allow for gatherings, for you to visit family and friends, for you to go out and about. Sure, big events and bars are still restricted in most places, but if one wants to socialize, they still can.