Twenty-one year old with no pre-existing conditions dies from Coronavirus

> that's on the order of a .001% chance of dying.

Not exactly, there's factors pushing that way down, and some up.

We shouldn't look at [mortality /infected numbers], but rather at [mortality / resolved cases]. Given the exponential growth, most infected occurred very recently, and their death may still be pending, bound to occur in the coming weeks. For example, suppose an infection takes 1 month to resolve. If in January 100 get infected, in February 1000, and in February all the 100 infected from January have died, the mortality rate isn't 100/1100, it's 100/100.

Instead, looking at just the resolved numbers: either death, or recovery, are more accurate. This is still not fully reliable given the cases resolving in death or recovery may have different timing, but it's better than just looking at gross infected rates. This pushes up the 0.001% figure.

More importantly though, our infected numbers are way, way off. Probably 10 times higher. Most countries only test people who are hospitalised. The rest must stay home. There's no country that I know of that is going to people's homes to test people at scale. And there's only a few countries with a drive-through testing kind of model. Given there is evidence that substantial percentages (perhaps 50%) are asymptomatic, and that weak and mild cases aren't being tested either, the true infected numbers are way worse. (which pushes down your 0.001% figure).

Imagine the news was running a sensationalized story about "Man dies after drinking Diet Coke. Diet Coke can kill you!"

Except then the comments all point out that the man had PKU, and that Diet Coke won't will you unless you have PKU. And that virtually everybody who has PKU already knows they have it. That the typical person has nothing to worry about from Diet Coke.

Would you object to the comments pointing this out? Would you say they're blaming the person who died? Or would you just say that they're contextualizing a very important piece of information that the news is overlooking to sensationalize its story.

This is not even close to "first time we know of that anyone young and healthy has died of the disease", even though such diagnosed & reported cases are relatively rare.

Even if you like those "very good odds", do you really think it is smart to risk playing Russian Roulette at 1/1000 odds for a pizza party?

More critically, even if you like those odds, all the people you meet when you fail to maintain distance, wear PPE, etc. did NOT knowingly decide that those odds are OK for them.

The hospital resources consumed by you or those you unwittingly expose will also prevent treatment of many completely unrelated accidents & health issues, e.g., we now have examples like neurologists staffing ERs, which means their neuro patients get punted.

The sense of perspective to maintain is not "this isn't a big deal", but that this is an exponentially growing deadly threat to a significant portion of the population, and every person even those at minimal personal risk to themselves need to take on the larger responsibility of helping the society survive.

They can, or they cannot. The media lying about the effectiveness of masks for several weeks was “right” in that it probably allowed hospitals to refresh their stockpiles before mass panic buying set in. But it was a lie nonetheless. Same with the “coronavirus is a virus, Purell is useless because it is antibacterial” meme. The media is burning its credibility in favor of noble lies — but at the end, will it be worth it?

She's back at home temporarily (broke up with a boyfriend that left her in a bad financial situation, moved back home to recuperate). She was planning to move out this summer and move in with friends who were buying a house, but buying a house may not be viable for them now due to a job at risk.

Someone once gave me a definition of family... "If you have to go there, they have to let you in".

On the flip side, I think we're all going to get exposed sooner or later, over the course of the next year or so. I'll just get exposed sooner than ideal.

On the plus side, she may be moving entirely to work from home in the near future, as they'll be closing inpatient services at her clinic. On the minus side, her brother just got a job at a grocery store after losing his retail job at the mall (mall closed), so now he's probably an even worse vector than she is.