[mgsouth]

New York state has had 1 person in 1,200 [0] die from COVID-19, and is on track for 1 in 1,000. Do you know 1,000 people? If you lived in NYC, how many of your acquaintances would have died? How many people you know die from the flu every year?

Not even the most extreme estimates I've seen suggest that NY has anything approaching 50% immunity. Reopening NY and letting people catch CV19 would double, triple, ? the death rate.

There is no suggestion that NY is special as regards total numbers. (Velocity, due to population density, assume yes.) This is not the flu.

[0] A of 2020-04-17 880 deaths per 1M population. http://91-divoc.com/pages/covid-visualization/

[downerending]

FWIW, I don't know 1,000 people. Of the people I know about, one person has (probably) had COVID-19 (mild), and it's possible that I had it early (also mild).

Aside from "old age", the leading causes of death (and certainly years lost) among people I knew are AIDS and traffic collisions. This virus is going to have to try a lot harder to get on that scoreboard.

It's also worth noting that "reopening" doesn't mean people will just revert to prior behavior. Most will be very careful, and some will never revert. Wuhan reopened, and their restaurants are not springing back (yet?).

[bequanna]

NYC is absolutely not representative of the rest of the country. In fact, they appear to be the hardest hit locale in the world in no small part due to their poor and delayed response.

I agree, reopening NYC would be a mistake, but large portions of the US (especially rural areas) remain largely unaffected by this.

The average age of death in my state (MN) is 88 with preexisting conditions. Our death rate is 0.0019% (!) with a flattened curve for some time now. Most of the US is not NYC.

[mgsouth]

The point being, an unusually large percentage of the people who contract CV19 die. Lower density == longer time to hit X% infected and Y% dead, but you'll still get there. (With caveats that X is a bit lower with lockdown, and Y gets higher when medical system is overloaded.)

Minnesota death rate is, as you say, currently at 19/million, but is growing at about 10%/day. The curve fits WA state's; continuing along that curve, WA currently has 79/million and is growing by 3%/day.

[downerending]

The question is not "How many will die?". Sadly, many will.

The question is "How much net difference will different reopening schedules make?". The answer to that is unclear, but remaining in lockdown for six months could easily kill more people (net).