If the true mortality rate is tiny, how did this virus manage to kill 153k people in 3 months? Can someone ELI5 me that? People have been saying "Flu kills 30k Americans every year" and now 30k Americans died of this disease in 3 months AFTER locking up the entire country. Something doesn't add up.

If the most vulnerable did not have flu shots, the mortality of the flu would be shocking. You may or may not need one (or notice if you didn't) but every high-viral-load-facing healthcare worker, cystic fibrosis patient, etc. gets a flu shot like clockwork. And while they don't always work, they mostly work, and that hugely reduces mortality. The problem with this one is the novelty. Human immune systems get better trained (not necessarily better) with age. Cytokine storms in the eldery with covid-19 is the biological equivalent of an overfit AI with memory leaks that runaway. If the R0 turns out to be 5.6, basically everyone has been exposed at this point (not necessarily infected).

Is it usual to see healthcare workers dying of flu as well, like they do with COVID due to high viral load?

> Is it usual to see healthcare workers dying of flu as well, like they do with COVID due to high viral load?

SARS-1 (2002/2003) wiped out ICU staff in both Toronto and S. Korea.

"High viral load" is an undefined term, so I won't comment on that.

The argument, as I understand it, is that they typically have near 100% vaccination. Akin to herd immunity in that cohort. If they did not have that, it would be much worse.

Because it's novel and incredibly contagious. Unlike the flu, where many get seasonal flu shots, no one has antibodies for the virus so there's no herd immunity. Meaning it's just spreading like wild fire. And it's all happening at once so healthcare systems are overwhelmed, which affects patient outcomes. I suspect the number of deaths are quite a bit higher because of those dying without getting tested.

Tiny mortality times huge number of infected still equals lots of deaths.

yea as some people have stated, if even 30% of the world gets infected and we have a 0.5% mortality rate, then that is 11.5 million people... not a trivial amount....

> If the true mortality rate is tiny, how did this virus manage to kill 153k people in 3 months?

Because there's 7 billion people on earth.

> People have been saying "Flu kills 30k Americans every year" and now 30k Americans died of this disease in 3 months AFTER locking up the entire country.

It's been spreading world-wide since Dec.

> Something doesn't add up.

GIGO.

This wasn’t totally random: “ This study had several limitations. First, our sampling strategy selected for members of Santa Clara County with access to Facebook and a car to attend drive-through testing sites. This resulted in an over- representation of white women between the ages of 19 and 64, and an under-representation of Hispanic and Asian populations, relative to our community. Those imbalances were partly addressed by weighting our sample population by zip code, race, and sex to match the county. We did not account for age imbalance in our sample, and could not ascertain representativeness of SARS-CoV-2 antibodies in homeless populations. Other biases, such as bias favoring individuals in good health capable of attending our testing sites, or bias favoring those with prior COVID-like illnesses seeking antibody confirmation are also possible. The overall effect of such biases is hard to ascertain”

I know at least one person was inclined to get tested because he had a bad flu earlier.

Yes this is great news. Anyone who is positive for this test theoretically can go back to work.