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A comment on Beware second waves of Covid-19 if lockdowns eased early: study. Parent comment

Re:Beware second waves of Covid-19 if lockdowns eased early:... by vkou on Friday March 27, 2020 @03:40AM (#22701034)
This virus is currently killing people 30 times faster than the flu. ~0.01% of the population dies from the flu each year.

0.12% of the population of Italy died over the past two weeks from COVID-19, and the rate of deaths has still not peaked - despite a complete lockdown. Had there not been a lockdown, the death rate would have continued doubling every 3 days.

You're drawing a false equivalence.

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Re:Beware second waves of Covid-19 if lockdowns eased early:... by jobigoud on Friday March 27, 2020 @04:53AM (#22701292)
> 0.12% of the population of Italy died over the past two weeks from COVID-19

I think you mixed up numbers, this looks too large by one order of magnitude. Maybe you used the numer of cases instead of deaths or something.

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Re:Beware second waves of Covid-19 if lockdowns eased early:... by vkou on Friday March 27, 2020 @12:40PM (#22704398)
Sorry, I missed a zero. It's 0.012% - but over two weeks, instead of over a year. So, the 30x number is correct... But not the 0.12% one.
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Re:Beware second waves of Covid-19 if lockdowns eased early:... by foobarian on Friday March 27, 2020 @09:07AM (#22702522)
I understand how much bigger the mortality is for this virus, and I understand why we are reacting this way. But how do you argue that deaths from one virus are not equivalent to the other? If it's just numbers, can you specify the number that is OK to let die instead of locking down?
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Re:Beware second waves of Covid-19 if lockdowns eased early:... by vkou on Friday March 27, 2020 @12:39PM (#22704389)
If the death rate were within 5x of the flu, and if the death rate did not increase dramatically when our medical system is overloaded, a hard lockdown would probably be a mistake.

It's not 5x, and it does increase dramatically, though.

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