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How can a disease with 1% mortality shut down the United States?

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Re: How can a disease with 1% mortality shut down the United States?

#41

Post by senectus1 »

crooked-v wrote: post #4

The tl;dr: > So now all of a sudden, that “but it’s only 1% fatal!” becomes: > 3,282,000 people dead. > 62,358,000 hospitalized. > 59,076,000 people with permanent heart damage. > 32,820,000 people with permanent lung damage. > 9,846,000 people with strokes. > 6,564,000 people with muscle weakness. > 6,564,000 people with loss of cognitive function.

Not that I agree with the article, but a most of those numbers are the same people...

but yeah. US population, approx 330M, 59M of which are likely to be permanently fucked up by this virus and 3M permanently dead. not to mention the amount of people that died or got permanently damaged due to the fact that the hospitals were overloaded. They may not have been Covid patients but bleeding out from a undiscovered brain hemorrhage because the hospital was packed and the dr's overworked is still just as dead as 1% of covid sufferers...

Re: How can a disease with 1% mortality shut down the United States?

#43

Post by ceejayoz »

6nf wrote: post #39
topkai22 wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm pretty sure the last time the flu got anywhere near a 0.5% IFR rate was the 1918 pandemic, which also devested the economy and resulted in shutdowns. Covid-19 also is substantially more transmissible than flu. There is nothing since 1918 that is comparable to where we are now, at least within the US context. Even the polio outbreaks (where in schools, movie theaters, pools and other features were shutdown to prot…

The 1918 pandemic was 2.5% Just wanted to point that out since the way you worded your comment could lead people to believe that it was closer to 0.5%

The IFR for the 1918 pandemic was substantially higher than 2.5%.

https://www.cdc.gov/flu/pandemic-resources/1918-pandemic-h1n...

> It is estimated that about 500 million people or one-third of the world’s population became infected with this virus. The number of deaths was estimated to be at least 50 million worldwide with about 675,000 occurring in the United States.

That'd be a 10% IFR.

Re: How can a disease with 1% mortality shut down the United States?

#44

Post by dragonwriter »

6nf wrote: post #7

What is the mortality rate of one of the more severe stains of the common cold or the flu? I'm sure we've had one of those that got to 0.5% or more in recent history? Does that mean 0.5% is too low to shut everything down?

> What is the mortality rate of one of the more severe stains of the common cold or the flu?

One of the more severe strains of the flu? 10% globally (1918 H1N1 pandemic flu, estimated 500 million infected, 50 million killed), about 2% in the US.

> I'm sure we've had one of those that got to 0.5% or more in recent history?

No, and certainly not one that also was a global pandemic. I mean, the 2009 H1N1 pandemic swine flu had, in the US, about 0.02% mortality. Typical seasonal flu has a 0.1% mortality rate. The common cold is a syndrome caused by a variety of viruses (mostly rhinoviruses, but I think the next most common are coronaviruses.) If we had a relative of one of those that produced serious health impacts with any frequency, we wouldn't call it the common cold, but, e.g., COVID-19.

> Does that mean 0.5% is too low to shut everything down?

The mortality rate alone is not the measure. You need to consider the health system burden per infection (because if you saturate that system, mortality goes up, and not just for the infection causing the above-normal saturation.) And you need to consider how infectious the disease is, and what the transmission vectors are. And you need to consider the incidence of severe-but-nonfatal effects.

Re: How can a disease with 1% mortality shut down the United States?

#45

Post by dragonwriter »

ceejayoz wrote: post #43
6nf wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The 1918 pandemic was 2.5% Just wanted to point that out since the way you worded your comment could lead people to believe that it was closer to 0.5%

The IFR for the 1918 pandemic was substantially higher than 2.5%. https://www.cdc.gov/flu/pandemic-resources/1918-pandemic-h1n... > It is estimated that about 500 million people or one-third of the world’s population became infected with this virus. The number of deaths was estimated to be at least 50 million worldwide with about 675,000 occurring in the United States. That'd be a 10% IFR.

I think 2-2.5% frequently cited is the estimated IFR in the US.

Re: How can a disease with 1% mortality shut down the United States?

#46

Post by noxer »

Can't believe people still question the shutdowns as if there would be a scenario without. The people in power could choose between enforced but somewhat controlled shutdowns or the chaos shutdown. No shutdown was never an option. Most people would have long done their own "shutdown" completely voluntary. It would just be more chaotic and less effective and it would have needed way more people to die first.

Re: How can a disease with 1% mortality shut down the United States?

#47

Post by 6nf »

noxer wrote: post #46

Can't believe people still question the shutdowns as if there would be a scenario without. The people in power could choose between enforced but somewhat controlled shutdowns or the chaos shutdown. No shutdown was never an option. Most people would have long done their own "shutdown" completely voluntary. It would just be more chaotic and less effective and it would have needed way more people to die first.

Several countries like Sweden and Japan and Korea proved that there are other options.

Re: How can a disease with 1% mortality shut down the United States?

#48

Post by 6nf »

TheGrim-888 wrote: post #31
crooked-v wrote: post #4

The tl;dr: > So now all of a sudden, that “but it’s only 1% fatal!” becomes: > 3,282,000 people dead. > 62,358,000 hospitalized. > 59,076,000 people with permanent heart damage. > 32,820,000 people with permanent lung damage. > 9,846,000 people with strokes. > 6,564,000 people with muscle weakness. > 6,564,000 people with loss of cognitive function.

Where are these rates coming from? They seem absolutely absurd. Are you suggesting that 17% of the US population is going to have permanent heart damage, and that 3% of the population is going to have a stroke, from contracting covid? That seems completely disconnected from reality. 3.5MM people in the US (at least) have already tested positive. Are you trying to imply that over 100,000 of these people have had a str…

The author got his math wrong.

Re: How can a disease with 1% mortality shut down the United States?

#49

Post by dantheman »

noxer wrote: post #46

Can't believe people still question the shutdowns as if there would be a scenario without. The people in power could choose between enforced but somewhat controlled shutdowns or the chaos shutdown. No shutdown was never an option. Most people would have long done their own "shutdown" completely voluntary. It would just be more chaotic and less effective and it would have needed way more people to die first.

In NYC, the shutdown was happened after rates of infection had already plummetted. Ill admit the data is really bad and hard to draw firm conclusions from; but in NYC - the only difference between now and when the shutdown happened is we have a lot of outdoor seating. Stores were requiring masks, limiting the number of concurrent shoppers, etc... They could have just closed indoor dining instead of shutting everything down.

Re: How can a disease with 1% mortality shut down the United States?

#50

Post by dragonwriter »

akira2501 wrote: post #37

> Three million people dead would monkey wrench the economy no matter what. Wouldn't that largely depend on the age of the victims? If the majority of victims are over retirement age, then this isn't likely to be true. We've had nearly 1% of our population killed or wounded in a short period of time before, it's impact on the economy doesn't seem that obvious. > 18 of those will have permanent heart damage for the re…

> If the majority of victims are over retirement age

No, it's not an election where the majority is the only thing that counts. And if younger people that are seriously ill are spending months debilitated (much of that hospitalized) where older people would die because they couldn't withstand the combination of the disease and the necessary supportive measures, taking more resources while losing more productivity for each young person that gets seriously ill, the fact that more old people are dying is even less relevant to the economic impact

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