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by loblollyboy 2244 days ago
No, most people are just illogical.

The numbers show that this is <1% fatal and probably <0.1% but all it takes is one story of some 30 year old dying on the news and everybody loses their minds.

Granted, I was very scared myself before we had numbers, but I don’t know how many people are willing to actually take a look at them now that this has become sort of political. It’s like how a school shooting will get a lot of coverage, but nobody talks about how way more people are shooting themselves in the head. Emotions over facts.

1 comments

> The numbers show that this is <1% fatal and probably <0.1%

In New York City about 0.15% of the entire population of the city have already died from the virus, putting a lower limit on the IFR.

Estimates of the IFR have been consistently between about 0.5% to 1% by most authorities I have confidence in.

That is a lower limit on the IFR in NYC. They also have more people over sixty two than city of Seattle has people. So, much more dense, with about 13% of the population an at risk group.

And calculate that IFR per age band. Running WA numbers in https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23080035 shows that the IFR here ranges from .7% to 15%(!) if you do that.