Hundreds of thousands in L.A. may have been infected with coronavirus: study

Re:Hundreds of thousands in L.A. may have been infected with... by arcticbull on Monday April 20, 2020 @08:29PM (#22930538)

The issue is you're not adjusting for the exponential fatality risk for old folks, and that those in Lombardy are the oldest in Europe. It's hundreds of times worse for old folks than for young folks.

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Re:Hundreds of thousands in L.A. may have been infected with... by joe_the_user on Monday April 20, 2020 @11:41PM (#22931628)

The US doesn't have a hundred times less old people than Italy. The whole "don't worry about old people dying" attitude of those eager to "reopen the economy" is kind of despicable.

Florida has 20% of it's population over 65 and it's 21 million people might similarly be rather hard hit.

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Re:Hundreds of thousands in L.A. may have been infected with... by arcticbull on Tuesday April 21, 2020 @12:47AM (#22932003)

> The US doesn't have a hundred times less old people than Italy. The whole "don't worry about old people dying" attitude of those eager to "reopen the economy" is kind of despicable.

It's totally despicable, and it's not my position.

I propose we do what the UK proposed, and what Sweden is doing: keep all vulnerable folks inside, provide them with services such as groceries and any healthcare they may need on-site, and release the low risk to build a protective barrier of herd immunity around them. That should have been evident when I said "old people were hundreds of times worse off."

That's totally orthogonal to my point, which is that you can't project the mortality rate of a population that's overwhelmingly disproportionately affected, scale it linearly onto the world population and assume that'll be at all representative of the reality on the ground.

And yes, Florida may be affected very badly, and the plan may need to be adjusted accordingly.

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