4 ms·

First, it’s closer to 4 in 200 [1] Second, there’s evidence that even if people don’t die, there can be long term neurological effects [2]. Third, even if we

First, it’s closer to 4 in 200 [1] Second, there’s evidence that even if people don’t die, there can be long term neurological effects [2]. Third, even if we accept your number, 1 in 200 would still be 1.5 million Americans dead, not even considering the rest of the world. I am personally not comfortable doing nothing to stop that number. I agree that being super worried about a 1 in a million blood clot might be short sighted, especially since the death rate from catching the virus is 2 in 100. [1] https://coronavirus.jhu.edu/data/mortality https://coronavirus.jhu.edu/data/mortality [2] https://www.reuters.com/article/idUSKBN2BT2ZI https://www.reuters.com/article/idUSKBN2BT2ZI

mizzack 6y ago
It's absolutely disingenuous to use CFR to drive home a point about absolute deaths rates in a population. People with asymptomatic infections (which are the majority of them) do not have any reason to get tested, so they do not count as "cases".
- tombert 6y ago
  That's probably true, so maybe the 2% death rate is too high, again, let's assume that the OP's point of 0.5% is accurate. As I said, that still implies that if everyone in the United States got it, 1.5 million of them would die (320,000,000 * .005). That's a lot of people. If a government did nothing to prevent a terrorist attack that killed 1.5 million people, most people would (rightly) be pretty upset. EDIT: Also, forgot to mention, it's totally disingenuous to only look at "deaths". We do not fully know the long term health effects, but as I stated there's potential neurological effects, potential risks of type 1 diabetes, and people permanently losing smell.
  - lax4ever 6y ago
    While I can appreciate where you are coming from, countering a terrorist attack typically has something that we don't have with COVID and that is information. The world was introduced and expected to react to this disease without any sort of "tactical" knowledge. Even if you include the other four variants of coronavirus, the availability of information can still be considered sorely lacking. Discounting government-provided information, even medical sources had a harder time providing a consensus on how the disease was transmitted during the first few months. That the larger questions like why we have such a large population that appears to be asymptomatic remains unanswered while we are still being pushed to "one-size-fits-all" remedy (and a remedy that appears to only be there to debase the severity of symptoms) doesn't help. Unfortunately, we need information, and information is going to take time. The long term arguments for health side effects are on both sides of the coin here.
- tremon 6y ago
  It's also similarly absolutely disingenuous to use any other number that's not based on measured (or measurable) facts. CFR is the only one we have right now, what else do you suggest?
temp667 6y ago
This is absolute and total BS. 2% death rate? Who comes up with this total garbage? You have 100M infected in US as the estimate. A 2% death rate is 2M deaths from COVID alone. I've not seen anything like that as credible death rates - it's at least half if not a quarter of this rate - more like 0.5% or less. Do the same thing in countries with 70% infected rates - if fatality was really 2%+ death counts would be insane. You really start to understand how people start to doubt the crap COVID "experts" put out when basic math shows it is garbage.
- tombert 6y ago
  > Who comes up with this total garbage? Johns Hopkins University. I don't feel like that's typically considered a bad source. Maybe it's a bit high or they're looking at different data sets. But again, and I cannot overstate this enough, even if I accept the 0.5% number, that's still a lot of deaths, about 1.5 million if everyone in the US gets it. According to the NYTimes [1], there's been about half a million deaths from COVID. If your provided number of 100M infected people is correct, then that would be consistent with 1.5M dying if everyone gets infected (US population ~= 3 * 100M, 3 * 500,000 = 1.5M). [1] https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/us/coronavirus-us-cases.html https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/us/coronavirus-us-c...

mizzack 6y ago

It's absolutely disingenuous to use CFR to drive home a point about absolute deaths rates in a population. People with asymptomatic infections (which are the majority of them) do not have any reason to get tested, so they do not count as "cases".

tombert 6y ago
That's probably true, so maybe the 2% death rate is too high, again, let's assume that the OP's point of 0.5% is accurate. As I said, that still implies that if everyone in the United States got it, 1.5 million of them would die (320,000,000 * .005). That's a lot of people. If a government did nothing to prevent a terrorist attack that killed 1.5 million people, most people would (rightly) be pretty upset. EDIT: Also, forgot to mention, it's totally disingenuous to only look at "deaths". We do not fully know the long term health effects, but as I stated there's potential neurological effects, potential risks of type 1 diabetes, and people permanently losing smell.
- lax4ever 6y ago
  While I can appreciate where you are coming from, countering a terrorist attack typically has something that we don't have with COVID and that is information. The world was introduced and expected to react to this disease without any sort of "tactical" knowledge. Even if you include the other four variants of coronavirus, the availability of information can still be considered sorely lacking. Discounting government-provided information, even medical sources had a harder time providing a consensus on how the disease was transmitted during the first few months. That the larger questions like why we have such a large population that appears to be asymptomatic remains unanswered while we are still being pushed to "one-size-fits-all" remedy (and a remedy that appears to only be there to debase the severity of symptoms) doesn't help. Unfortunately, we need information, and information is going to take time. The long term arguments for health side effects are on both sides of the coin here.
tremon 6y ago
It's also similarly absolutely disingenuous to use any other number that's not based on measured (or measurable) facts. CFR is the only one we have right now, what else do you suggest?

temp667 6y ago

This is absolute and total BS. 2% death rate? Who comes up with this total garbage? You have 100M infected in US as the estimate. A 2% death rate is 2M deaths from COVID alone. I've not seen anything like that as credible death rates - it's at least half if not a quarter of this rate - more like 0.5% or less. Do the same thing in countries with 70% infected rates - if fatality was really 2%+ death counts would be insane. You really start to understand how people start to doubt the crap COVID "experts" put out when basic math shows it is garbage.

tombert 6y ago
> Who comes up with this total garbage? Johns Hopkins University. I don't feel like that's typically considered a bad source. Maybe it's a bit high or they're looking at different data sets. But again, and I cannot overstate this enough, even if I accept the 0.5% number, that's still a lot of deaths, about 1.5 million if everyone in the US gets it. According to the NYTimes [1], there's been about half a million deaths from COVID. If your provided number of 100M infected people is correct, then that would be consistent with 1.5M dying if everyone gets infected (US population ~= 3 * 100M, 3 * 500,000 = 1.5M). [1] https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/us/coronavirus-us-cases.html https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/us/coronavirus-us-c...