Faith based, other than the dead people.

And the NYE party I host is also made up of billionaires on average if Bezos shows up.

Also, 0.35% means that if everyone in the US contracts it that's a million dead people. And that's only from the disease.

Millions more will die because of the medical resources tied up with taking care of the sick and those who don't die. Arguably, more people will die because of the one person who takes up 20 days of ER resources and survives COVID than the person who shows up and dies of COVID on the first day.

Which is exactly what happened in the hotspots which were hit first and hard in Europe and North America.

An infection fatality rate of 0.35% means 500,000 deaths if half of Americans are infected. Not the end of civilization, but certainly something to take seriously.

The single worst aspect to America's Covid response was that what should have been a medical or scientific debate became politicized.

Yes that would be terrible, but the death rate is trending down in most areas (even those with minimal pandemic control measures) so I predict the final death toll will be under 500,000. For comparison purposes we lose about 600,000 per year to each of cancer and heart disease. The pandemic is bad and needs to be taken seriously but it's certainly not the end of our civilization.

The politicization of anything to do with public health is inevitable. Science can provide useful inputs, but ultimately the decisions have to be made by elected politicians. We live in a republic, not a technocracy.

Why do people obsess over the fatality rate to dismiss the pandemic, but ignore the long term impairment of many of those who survive?

Second, why not learn from the Far East and adopt a mask wearing, social distancing culture and prepare and lockdown?

Because there's going to be long-term harmful effects of the lockdowns too, that will be worse the longer they go on for. The real question is, why do people ignore that while making such a big deal of the long-term effects of the virus on survivors?

One is easier to grasp. Someone coughing the rest of their life is easier to visually see than someone fresh out of college who is now getting a job as a delivery driver and may never recover economically.

How many is many? What does the science tell us about the percentage of recovered patients who suffer long-term impairment?

Pandemic control measures such as mask wearing and social distancing can be helpful to "flatten the curve" on a temporary basis but are obviously not sustainable and won't be sufficient to eradicate the virus. SARS-CoV-2 is now endemic and will be with us essentially forever, even after a vaccine is developed. People need to think about what can work over longer time frames while objectively weighing both costs and benefits.

The link you cite is a very rough estimate of CFR as described in the paper. CFR varies tremendously based on the underlying demographics of the population and the treatment available - it's unclear why you focus on this metric. COVID-19 in the United States and other countries as well will be (if it isn't already) the 3rd leading cause of death. This is something that many people will change their behavior around, whether that is "panicking" or not is unclear from your original post.

However, if folks are willing to wear seat belts (although in the vast majority of trips they are useless) for a less likely cause of death, many will put on masks, avoided crowded indoor spaces and practice better hygiene for the 3rd leading cause of death. This will occur whether legally mandated or not.

Did you actually read the link? It provides estimated ranges for both CFR and IFR.

It's not disappointing to see humans caring for others. There's a difference between "panicking over the disease" and wanting our elder people (for which the IFR is way over 0.35%) to be safe. Notwithstanding the fact that this 0.35% cannot possibly be achieved if the health system collapses.

If "we" wanted our elder people to be safe we would take steps to actively protect them. So far that isn't happening, which is very disappointing. Look how New York governor Cuomo sent COVID-19 patients to nursing homes even though he knew it was risky. That caused the worst cluster of deaths in the US so far.

I think you can do some basic math yourself and calculate yourself how many deaths that will be in the US if say 70% of the population gets it. And then we haven’t even taken into account that the fatality rate would be much higher without proper hospital care for all that need it because all the hospitals are overwhelmed and there ain’t any ICU left.

Imagine being so callous to think that the preventable deaths of 1,148,700 of your fellow Americans is okay.

Imagine trying to derail the discussion with unscientific appeals to emotion. Obviously no one is okay with extra deaths, so you're arguing against a strawman.

So far there have been about 218,000 American deaths. There is no scientific basis for your 1,148,700 number. The only way we could have prevented all of the American deaths would have been by completely sealing our borders back in December, but at the time no one realized how serious it was. We now know there was already widespread community transmission by January and at that point a high death toll became inevitable.

https://www.wsj.com/graphics/when-did-covid-hit-earliest-dea...

You quote a 0.35% death rate. Google says there are 328.2 million Americans. Do the math.

It's amusing for someone arguing "science" to be unable to multiple two fucking numbers.

You are saying 1,148,700 deaths is okay, that people are "panicking" for no reason. A 40% increase in death rate (the CDC says there were 2,813,503 deaths in 2019) seems like a pretty reasonable reason to "panic".

Trying to save a sixth of a Holocaust seems like decent public policy.

I didn't quote a 0.35% death rate. That represents a possible upper bound on IFR based on data so far. Even in a worst case scenario it is impossible for 100% of Americans to be infected. Your simplistic estimate is missing critical variables.

I never claimed that any number of deaths is "okay" so stop arguing in bad faith and putting words in my mouth. Panicking is irrational and never helpful. We need rational, science-based policies now more than ever.

Certainly we should save as many lives as possible, but we can't get tunnel vision and focus on COVID-19 to the exclusion of all else. The lockdowns also kill people. They die slowly from lack of medical care, depression, substance abuse, and suicide but in the end they're dead all the same. It's like trying to run a business by focusing entirely on revenue and ignoring costs.

Under 0.35% which is several times greater than the next comparable (the flu), and greater for more than 30% of the population due to age and pre-existing condition. Very few people dont have a personal stake in keeping the people they love alive (parents, spouses, children, siblings, friends, lovers, etc.)

The panic makes more sense if you consider the overwhelming majority of people are looking not just at their own age and pre existing condition but also realizing the people who enrich their lives are also at risk.

The "panic" framing is manipulative itself. It is an attempt to stigmatize people who consider the disease to be serious issue as emotional and scared as opposed to arguing with them.

Not sure about the United States but in my parts of the world (Eastern Europe) it has also transformed into a social- and political-differentiating issue, i.e. people of a certain social status and of certain political views tend to over-emphasise the seriousness of the virus and to paint the other side in all sorts of unflattering colours because, supposedly, this latter side doesn't take the virus as serious as they do.

I happen to share the social- and political-views of the first part of people I talked about, but I've started to very largely diverge when it came to how the virus should be handled. In late January - early February this year I certainly thought that the fatality rate would be around 3-4% (especially after the first images coming out of Wuhan), but as the disaster in Northern Italy and then Spain was unfolding and we were starting to learn more about it I started to think that that number would be more close to 1-2%.

Most of the summer I thought that the fatality rate would be 1%, and then in early August I saw a recent study carried out in Sweden bringing that number down to 0.4%-0.6%. In the last couple of weeks I've started seeing even lower numbers (between 0.3% - 0.4%), which, if I'm not mistaken, would make this virus 3 or 4 times more deadly compared to the normal flu (which afaik has a 0.1% death rate) which is not great, but which is also not catastrophic.

Now, I've tried having this exact conversation with a couple of my friends just yesterday and it did not go well at all, they were accusing me of being anti-mask and of not taking the virus seriously enough. Apparently the bare numbers don't work even on educated people.

It sounds like me that you are taking exception to the abundance of caution displayed by public health officials which resulted in this agonizing economic downturn.

However, in the face of incomplete information, isn't erring on the side of caution the right way to proceed? If they had underplayed this, and had the mortality rate really been 3-4%, then you would have both millions dead AND economic devastation.

The scientific consensus is by definition a dynamic thing, ever changing in the face of increasing evidence. And thankfully so.

There may be some facts we don't know yet. The economist has done some research that suggests that the number of deaths have been significantly under-reported.

https://www.economist.com/graphic-detail/2020/07/15/tracking...

Personally, I am refraining from adopting a position as it make take years to have a better idea of what the fatality rate is.

The panic was never over the case or infection fatality rates. The panic is because of asymptomatic spreaders.

If a strain of influenza suddenly spiked to higher fatality rates, less drastic measures could contain it because it's usually obvious when you are contagious with influenza.

Also, as someone who had SARS-COV-2 and didn't die, it was fucking awful and I fully blame the complete failure of US leadership for the current fiasco.

That is not scientifically accurate. A significant fraction of influenza cases are also asymptomatic, and they are capable of spreading the disease to others.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4586318/

You could have already killed someone without even knowing it by transmitting the flu to them. There's no way to know for sure.

US federal and state handling of the pandemic has been mostly terrible. But even if we had competent, honest leaders I doubt the long-term death toll would be much different. Community transmission was already widespread by the time anyone realized there was a serious problem, and by that point it was too late to contain the pandemic.

https://www.wsj.com/graphics/when-did-covid-hit-earliest-dea...

Funny how places like Taiwan reacted far earlier and have near zero fatalities then.

I sometime forget to not bother commenting on overly politicized things on HN. Your own links show 20% potential asymptomatic influenza infections, which is only a tiny bit different from the estimated 80-95% on SARS-COV-2.

Downvote away though.

That is not scientifically accurate. During the USS Theodore Roosevelt outbreak only 19% of cases were asymptomatic. Those sailors were generally younger and healthier than the general population so if anything we would expect the overall rate of asymptomatic cases to be lower.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7315794/

So where are you coming up with that 80-95% number?