Repost from another topic: "The professor of intensive care medicine, who himself heads the ICU of the Rotterdam Erasmus MC, emphasizes that it is not only the elderly who are affected by the corona virus. 'What has mainly made the news is that older people die faster. This is about 2.5% of the entire population, while about 15% of the elderly die. But _more_than_half_ of those patients are under fifty years old. It also includes young people."

sources: 1. https://seekingalpha.com/news/3551823-just-seniors-not-clear

2. [original] https://www.ad.nl/dossier-coronavirus/40-a-50-nederlandse-co...

> Surely then it would make sense to only embargo people in identified vulnerable groups? Let the rest of the nation go about their business given they are very very unlikely to have anything bad happen and then, presumably they will stop being infectious even if the virus does get into their system again

Vulnerable or not, the rest of the nation is a transmission vector. Also, not all deaths happen among the identified vulnerable groups: "they are very very unlikely to have anything bad happen" is completely false.

It's not false. The rates of mortality being quoted are fundamentally wrong because testing is highly selective. I personally know people who likely have it, haven't been tested and so don't get counted. The virus is clearly more widespread than 200k infected who have actually been tested.

> Also, not all deaths happen among the identified vulnerable groups: "they are very very unlikely to have anything bad happen" is completely false.

Even assuming a 4% death rate (too high for the less vulnerable), that's a 96% chance of not having the worst possible consequences. So I'd say that's "very unlikely" for them.

This isn't the flu, and it's possible for even people in their teens to die (true of the flu as well), but let's not act like it's the likely outcome.

I've seen numbers in the 0.2% range for younger (< 39) age cohorts. That's twice as deadly as the flu (0.1%) but IMO not "shut society down" levels of bad for people in that age group.

That's the idea behind what UK is trying to do, I believe.