What is wrong with you?

Originally Posted by Rod Kaufman

"In his opening remarks at the March 3 media briefing on Covid-19, WHO Director-General Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus stated:
“Globally, about 3.4% of reported COVID-19 cases have died. By comparison, seasonal flu generally kills far fewer than 1% of those infected.” 

Total Global deaths as of today: 2,578,988
Total USA deaths as of today: 522,752

No, I don't think the death rate for covid19 is miniscule and I question the rationality of those who think otherwise...

Rod, One has to distinguish between deaths caused by covid 19 and deaths of individuals from other causes, with covid 19. I suspect that the number actually caused by the virus(particularly in healthy people) is considerably smaller. Even if the 500,000 is correct, that's a very small percent of the total population. We might also consider that a large number of people in the US may have or have had the virus, perhaps were sick or were not ill at all, and were never tested. 

Some people that I know that have become sick and tested positive found it to be an unpleasant experience, others were unaffected. 

Back when this entire business started in early 2020 and people were not getting out as much, I saw no reason to isolate myself. There were fewer cars on the road; that was nice. I conducted my life normally. It's obvious to me that this matter seems to have affected people's lives in a significantly different manner. Perhaps people have simply chosen to react in different ways.

I'm pleased that more states seem to be "opening up". 

Originally Posted by Darian Rachal

Rod, One has to distinguish between deaths caused by covid 19 and deaths of individuals from other causes, with covid 19. I suspect that the number actually caused by the virus(particularly in healthy people) is considerably smaller. Even if the 500,000 is correct, that's a very small percent of the total population. We might also consider that a large number of people in the US may have or have had the virus, perhaps were sick or were not ill at all, and were never tested. 

Some people that I know that have become sick and tested positive found it to be an unpleasant experience, others were unaffected. 

Back when this entire business started in early 2020 and people were not getting out as much, I saw no reason to isolate myself. There were fewer cars on the road; that was nice. I conducted my life normally. It's obvious to me that this matter seems to have affected people's lives in a significantly different manner. Perhaps people have simply chosen to react in different ways.

I'm pleased that more states seem to be "opening up". 

First the number of covid deaths is a confirmed number and, to put it into perspective, it exceeds the following: The US military saw 405,399 deaths during World War II, according to the Department of Veterans Affairs.

Originally Posted by Darian Rachal

Even if the 500,000 is correct, that's a very small percent of the total population.

It's correct, and one of the ways we know this is that it matches excess mortality data almost exactly. In other words, the excess death we have experienced over the last year since the pandemic began is almost exactly 500,000. On top of that, 500,000 in 1 in 600. If you were thinking about going in for elective cosmetic surgery, and the doctor told you that you had a 1 in 600 chance of dying, I'm guessing it would give you some pause.

Below is a graph from the CDC showing excess death in the US all the way back to January of 2017. Anything with a red plus sign above it is a month where excess death was recorded. The red plus signs in early 2018 are the deadly 2018 flu season—obviously, the period starting in late March 2020 till today are the COVID-19 pandemic. If you add up all the excess death numbers for that period, it equals 576,157. Amazingly close to our current count of 524,000.

All the data is here: https://data.cdc.gov/api/views/xkkf-xrst/rows.csv?accessType=DOWNLOAD&bom=true&format=true%20target=

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