Because hospitalizations and deaths are what matter, and hidden cases don’t change those things.

Idk, that’s how I think about it anyway.

and it is always better to have the facts.

Instead of 5% (123k/2.5M), it's .5% (123k/25M).

If all new infections suddenly stopped, like magic, there would still be some people already infected who will die.

It's about the same estimate of the death rate that I saw months ago, about 10 times worse than the flu (on average), and made worse if hospitals are overwhelmed and such.

Edit: Organ damage from infection should be considered too, of course, not just the deaths.

Also, out my way UPMC docs have said they've learned a lot on how to treat covid19 better. Now they aren't reflexively putting the sickest on ventilators but only as a last resort. I think they're starting to give steroids earlier along with the does of remdisiver they have on hand.

I think about 10% of the infected have been hospitalized, though, so it's nothing to sneeze at. (Pun intended.)

end up hospitalized.

from watching MSNBC's breathless coverage.

It was a lie to poo-poo masks during the early spread for the sake of trying to preserve them for frontline workers, though. That was mostly politics, with Dr. Fauci admitting recently that was the reason for it.

By the way, you're right about the hospitalizations. It's about 10% for people age 65 and older, I think.

The risk of permanent damage is more concerning to me. There's still many unknowns with this virus, and we don't even know if "herd immunity" is feasible. Some studies indicate that infection doesn't result in long-term immunity.

It's just ridiculous to put up with it. If people could cooperate more, the virus would be extinguished.

Fauci rolled through the immunity factors and every one he mentioned, the scientists don't know.

I think I would like to see cases divided into total, active and recovered. That would give a much better picture of where things stand. For ex, in Pennsylvaina, there are 83,770 cases with 78% recovered. That leaves active cases at 18,429 out of a state population of 12.8M or .14% of the total population.

... for confirmed cases. Among the cases with an outcome, it's about an 11% death rate. (Labeled as closed cases.) If we assume there were about 10 times as many cases, the death rate would be about 1.1%. (There might be some people who died from it and they were not properly accounted, though.)

Link:
https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/us/

This is my favorite site for projections and estimates.
https://covid19-projections.com/

The mathematician who created it used the data from Johns Hopkins and other sources, and he seemed to have the most accurate projections in the past -- i.e., unlike the IMHE model that was promoted early by the Trump administration, and which kept severely underestimating the deaths.

Edit: The map labeled "C19Pro Score" in the second link is very handy for quickly seeing the current hotspots in the country.

is your likelihood of encountering someone in the wild who is spreading live virus. Think of it this way, would you rather play Russian Roulette with a six shooter or a 60 shooter, given that your only choice is to play Russian Roulette?

In Russian Roulette you have a 17% chance of dying with every encounter. That rises quickly to 100% with more encounters. With Covid you have about 0.5% chance of dying and multiple encounters do not raise that rate. Of course the 0.5% rate includes deaths in nursing homes which are about half the deaths.

Since no one knows what the real numbers are, it's not really "news" at all at this point.

Look at "excess deaths" charts.

So many corpses haven't been tested for COVID19 and many who had the disease when they died were classified as pneumonia or heart failure. Especially in red states.

The true mortality rate is unknown at this point because the accounting has been spotty and skewed by partisans.

https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nvss/vsrr/covid19/excess_deaths.htm

Counts of deaths from all causes of death, including COVID-19, are presented. As some deaths due to COVID-19 may be assigned to other causes of deaths (for example, if COVID-19 was not diagnosed or not mentioned on the death certificate), tracking all-cause mortality can provide information about whether an excess number of deaths is observed, even when COVID-19 mortality may be undercounted. Additionally, deaths from all causes excluding COVID-19 were also estimated. Comparing these two sets of estimates — excess deaths with and without COVID-19 — can provide insight about how many excess deaths are identified as due to COVID-19, and how many excess deaths are reported as due to other causes of death. These deaths could represent misclassified COVID-19 deaths, or potentially could be indirectly related to the COVID-19 pandemic (e.g., deaths from other causes occurring in the context of health care shortages or overburdened health care systems).

As of June 3, 2020, additional information on weekly counts of deaths by cause of death has been added to this release. Similar to all causes of death, these weekly counts can be compared to values from the same weeks in prior years to determine whether recent increases have occurred for specific causes of death. The causes shown here were chosen based on analyses of the most prevalent comorbid conditions reported on death certificates where COVID-19 was listed as a cause of death (see https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nvss/vsrr/covid_weekly/index.htm#Comorbidities). Cause of death counts are based on the underlying cause of death, and presented for Respiratory diseases, Circulatory diseases, Malignant neoplasms, and Alzheimer disease and dementia. Deaths due to external causes (i.e. injuries) or unknown causes are excluded. For more detail, see the Technical Notes. Weekly counts of deaths were also added by age for all causes.

Week ending date in which the death occurred All Deaths involving COVID-19 (U07.1)1 Deaths from All Causes Percent of Expected Deaths2 Deaths involving Pneumonia, with or without COVID-19, excluding Influenza deaths
(J12.0–J18.9)3 Deaths involving COVID-19 and Pneumonia, excluding Influenza
(U07.1 and J12.0–J18.9)3 All Deaths involving Influenza, with or without COVID-19 or Pneumonia
(J09–J11), includes COVID-19 or Pneumonia4 Deaths involving Pneumonia, Influenza, or COVID-19
(U07.1 or
J09–J18.9)5
Total Deaths 108,684 1,223,289 105 118,510 47,017 6,455 185,695

2015-2020 they recorded ~4,700 deaths from pneumonia.
As of June 15th of this year, they had 5,100 pneumonia deaths.
About 400 more pneumonia deaths in 5.5 months than in the prior 5 years combined.
And COVID is a respiratory disease, primarily. Hmmmmm!
And they're reporting 3,300 deaths. This suggests FL might be 250%
Now many states are reporting on the up & up. So the smoothed out number should be 1.25 to 2.
Small dataset to draw inferences, but it does suggest there's something in those numbers.

The CDC website has a category for deaths with Covid, flu and pneumonia at 185,000, so 1.5x seems like the lowest possible multiplier

Three different insurance companies.
Email exchanges with them tell me companies are freaking over the life insurance payouts, especially those not fitting the models, that AREN'T listed as COVID deaths.
The payouts on the reported deaths are bad enough, but they have substantial unexplained, not predictable deaths. And the numbers first diverged from the models in February, even after adjusting for confirmed COVID deaths.
Item 3 in the evidence file that deaths are underreported.

And that’s just those with life insurance.

There are many poorer people with no life insurance at all.

But the actuaries are like a canary in the coal mine and their insight into the increased death rate is significant. All they do is crunch number all day long. This probably has them pulling their hair out. Imagine trying to predict mortality with this unknown variable tossed into the mix? Yikes.

Thanks for your post. It was very interesting.

3 of these guys are liberal and one a socially liberal libertarian, but not a Rand but.
They all hate PINO. Think he's terrible.
There relating of the issues may be somewhat magnified by that.
But, they're professionals who are a little embarrassed their predictions were this far off.

If he understood simple math and percentages, he could have done the right thing and spun it in his favor.

If he pushed to get as many people tested as possible, and published the percentage of positive cases it would be a heck of a lot lower now than back at the start of testing (when they were only testing people with symptoms). He could have spun it to make himself look good.

But that would have been slightly more work than ignoring it, hoping it went away, and lying about it when it didn't.

For which he WON'T wear a mask, or encourage others to do so?

his numbers. He does not govern - he performs. He is a lazy, incompetent, ignorant fool and I'm barely touching the surface.

Death rate of about 0.5%. No one is suggesting 2-4 million dead.

estimate. I'm not up on what the best current death rate estimate is though.

And then, of course, people started saying, Well, if that guy wants us to take HCQ, it's some bad voudou for sure! And so they didn't take it and they didn't die from it! Mission accomplished! But does the fake media give me any credit for saving all those lives? So unfair!"

Hilarious

although the testing does not really indicate that, then we may actually be a lot closer to herd immunity than we thought. However, even Sweden, which famously didn't do any shutdown of anything, is a fuck of a long way from meaningful herd immunity.

But yes, while this is a disease that kills, the death rate simply isn't all that terrible.

about long term damage to the lungs or other organs

this will not bring about an end to homo sapiens. Unless the virus is capable of lurking silently for years and then doing something terrible. Which while possible, does not seem too likely. Obviously, it would be years before we could know that.

Even if infection rate is that much higher, we are only at 10 %. So we are nowhere near herd immunity. That if this virus would even result in herd immunity, because it might not provide a long lasting immunity.

to 80% (8.7M) of Americans infected with influenze-like-illnesses and either not testing positive for the flu or not seeking treatment back in March.

Link: https://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-8451285/8-7-million-Americans-infected-coronavirus-MARCH-80-never-diagnosed.html