Had we not taken the limited steps we already did the number dead would have been much higher. As we saw, Somme hospitals were nearing “crisis level” of care which mean other more mundane illness become deadly plus doc literally pick ego is going to die.
Had we not taken the steps (i.e. total shutdown), there would have been more deaths in some places in the short term…no doubt; however, the question is if it is 10%, 25% or 100% more. Total shutdown seemed to be building on the assumption that we were going to preventing %100 - %200 more deaths than actually happened in March and April. We were assuming the shutdown would be saving hundreds of thousands of lives. We may have saved 10,000 to 20,000 lives as doctors in hospitals learned how to better treat severe Covid cases. This needs to be balanced with the following…
It is a balance. I wonder if taking the pain of an really more thorough and prolonged shutdown would have put is in a better position to reopen more of the economy now. Because the current situation will lead to lots of “economic” deaths IMO.
As opposed to what? Classes we’re no longer viable and various incidents clearly show that college students will have parties during a pandemic.
Except the high range of your number there is 500% more deaths than the low range. Doing more keeps it closer to 1%, doing less lets it slip to 5%. I doubt you’re volunteering to be in the 2-5% group of deaths.
Given that’s what many other countries did and yes they were in a better position to reopen, I think we can count that as likely yes. Some places effectively wiped it out but they responded earlier, more strongly, and they had better compliance with the guidelines issued.
Even Europe is having a resurgence in Covid Cases, and, for the most part, they were far stricter shutdowns than us. I can find many recent articles on this.
I’m not convinced of this. Below is an article about Vietnam. They shut down early, were very strict, nearly eliminated Covid, and now Covid is back. It shows the limits of science.
If the limit is “science can’t prevent everyone from dying” I don’t think anyone disputed that really. So now lets click your link…
In what world would you not prefer that death count to the one the US currently has?
Perhaps what I’m about to say might be taken as callous, but it is worth considering simply quarantining university students with little oversight and protecting older and other high risk university staff and faculty. The statistics would show that there is a similar likely hood of a 20 year old dying of Covid as the flu. Certainly the Covid death rate among elderly is much much higher than the flu, so protect the elderly.jack63:
As opposed to what? Classes we’re no longer viable and various incidents clearly show that college students will have parties during a pandemic.
A death rate in the US of 1% would be about 3.3 million. Covid will not come remotely close to killing that many people. That’s more than an order of magnitude off.HerCrazierHalf:
Except the high range of your number there is 500% more deaths than the low range. Doing more keeps it closer to 1%, doing less lets it slip to 5%. I doubt you’re volunteering to be
Of course we also have 100 years of medical science they didn’t have. No way to know this but wonder if something similar to COVID19 hit in 1918 if it wouldn’t have had similar numbers.
The difference is that covid spreads while the carrier is asymptomatic. The flu typically has symptoms during integral infectious stages. Business as usual will see rates much higher than the rates from our current actions.
It’s more than just death. A lot of survivors lung damage and other lifelong issues. Death is not always the worst outcome
Actually I don’t agree with this. Influenza can be asymptomatic. In fact there is a long list of asymptomatic diseases that we’ve been dealing for a long time…We didn’t shut down everything and send the world into a depression over these diseases.
I’m not familiar with the particulars of some of these to be honest. But the flu typically has an incredibly low fatality rate around .1%. Covid has a rate 10 - 50 times higher at 1% - 5%. HIV is asymptomatic, but it requires more interaction than simply proximity to spread. Lastly TB is treatable and has a much less invasive test. I suspect the nature of Covid testing will deter many.
This was an estimate form March…ish. New published peer reviewed journals put this range almost an order of magnitude lower.