There we go again. In NYC, 19 out of 100,000 people aged 18-45 died. (1)
There are roughly 110M people in that age group in the U.S. so that would mean 21000 deaths if the virus would spread as widely throughout the U.S. as it has in NYC (which is estimated to be around 25% of the population).
21000 deaths is not "near zero", nor is the population aged over 45 primarily found in nursing homes.
I'm not sure what your contrived narrative is, but actually it is near zero, far less than several other causes of death. (The annual mortality rate is over 1,000 per 100,000, so 19 per 100,000 is a round-off error.)
"He noted that between January and April in 2018, more than 234,000 people in the United States died of heart disease and nearly 199,000 died of cancer.
So far during the coronavirus pandemic, there have been about 16,700 Covid-19 deaths in the United States, according to the latest data from Johns Hopkins University."
"For 2016 specifically, National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) data shows 37,461 people were killed in 34,436 motor vehicle crashes, an average of 102 per day."
There is nothing the US can do to get to zero deaths from corona, so a more pragmatic public health policy is needed than "lock 300 million people down for years."
No, the annual death rate for the age group 18-45 is not 1000, it’s around 150. That is, even in the group of adults least affected by Covid-19, it would be near the top of the list for causes of death. In the most affected group (75+), the casualty rate is nearly 100 times higher.
It would be around the murder rate in Cincinnati (if all victims were 18-45 and the infection rate was equal to NYC)
I don’t have a narrative - I don’t pretend to know what the best course of action is.
But I am pointing out some of the glaring factual errors repeatedly made by people who are dismissive of the severity of this disease.
I suspect you are quoting case fatality rates instead of death rates.
In particular, the whole-population rate is <= 0.5%. (International agencies and other governments say 0.5%, the CDC says (1-.3)*.4%).
That includes asymptomatic and undiagnosed people. Case fatality rates only include diagnosed cases. Clearly, if you are diagnosed with the virus, you are more likely to die from it than an asymptomatic person, or a person with minor symptoms that doesn’t bother to call a doctor.
It is true that, at 100% infection rate, it would be the leading cause of death this year. The thing is, it’s a one time hit to life expectancies, so it’s not really comparable to the other risks.
That means it can be the number one cause of death, even though 99.5% of the people that catch it will recover and die of something else.
> I suspect you are quoting case fatality rates instead of death rates
No. There were 652 confirmed deaths and 129 probably deaths in NYC in the 18-44 age group. If there are 3 million people in that age group in NYC (my estimate, look up if you want the exact number) that gives a confirmed death rate of 21.7 per 100k and confirmed + probable death rate of 27 per 100k. Close enough.
Instead of taking shots at people on HN, write a detailed document and add a link - that would be useful.
But I'm not going to debate inaccurate corona statistics with a pedant on HN.
The mortality rate for young people is less than 1% - low for a pandemic. Ebola is 50% and up, and recurs every other year.
> it’s a one time hit to life expectancies
For people who actually get acutely sick from corona. I agree the 5% or so of people who get acutely ill will have a shortened lifespan, but there's no data for the other 95%.
How many of those people who died from cancer and heart diseased are aged 18-45? These numbers are largely irrelevant if we dont compare them apples-to-apples with the numbers in their proper cohort.
In any case, these tactics, namely cherry-picking, callousness towards human life, and flippant dismissal of the points of others, make it very hard to have a discussion here. It does not seem like the posts are being made to debate but instead pummel into submission.
Finally, there have been over 100,000 Covid-19 deaths in the US. Each one of them a human who could have not died from Covid-19.
> I can see from the hundreds of downvotes I've received in the past two months that very few people are considering the larger picture for society. I call that selfish.
This is quite the accusation. I think everyone is well aware of the long term impact of this lockdown, but when you start thinking of that 21k as real people: your brother, your sister, your niece, or your nephew, your best friend, shit gets real fast.
If it's selfish to not want my loved ones to die because our economy and healthcare system is so woefully flawed and unprepared, then I guess I'm selfish. Maybe we'll learn something this time, but probably not.
>the WHO is predicting 1 billion people will starve this year
This simply isn't true and it undermines your argument. The UN and WHO estimate that the virus will push an additional 100-250 million people into an at risk category of starvation. This category already has ~850 million people in it every year, of which 3-5 million actually starve.
This is horrific, and there is no need to exaggerate.
Yes you are selfish, and admittedly emotionally irrational as well.
If your only criterion is that you do not want your loved ones to die because something else that affects millions and is in fact necessary for millions of others to continue living decently goes on, then you're implicitly stating that a vast number of sometimes risky things should stop because there is a non-zero (and in many cases of things commonly done) higher-than-covid-death possibility that one of these things will kill some loved one of yours.
Now you're welcome to your personal, selfish and emotionally charged view of course but public policy and rules that affect billions of human beings cannot be decided on the slimmest margins of possibility that someone somebody else loves will die. Doing so will in any case indirectly or directly cause somebody else that someone else loves to die.
The global economic depression we seem to have unleashed at this point will also very, very likely cause misery and death for hundreds of thousands if not millions of other people who are the loved ones of someone who does not want them to die.
Now, the lockdowns that have been the case so far were in large part based on what are looking more like over-inflated initial estimates of mortality for the virus, so based on precaution derived from these initial estimates, it was understandable that they were implemented even if they had their own risks, but now if the mortality rate of the virus is indeed much lower than previously expected, it's only irresponsible to continue with lockdown measures that cause tremendous harm of their own for many reasons. Least of all should they be continued because there's always a handful of people like you who say "But my loved ones, I don't care about anything else no matter how minor the risk to these people I know"..
There are roughly 110M people in that age group in the U.S. so that would mean 21000 deaths if the virus would spread as widely throughout the U.S. as it has in NYC (which is estimated to be around 25% of the population).
21000 deaths is not "near zero", nor is the population aged over 45 primarily found in nursing homes.
1) https://www1.nyc.gov/site/doh/covid/covid-19-data.page