It could be argued that the response to the Spanish Flu, Polio, HK Flu, H1N1, Zika, Swine etc. It appears by most measures this is an order of magnitude less lethal than Spanish Flu. THIS one, however, is political.
The update the CDC made is interesting. AS the footnote in the estimate table states, the IFR is taken from the pre-print _A systematic review and meta-analysis of published research data on COVID-19 infection-fatality rates_ by Meyerowitz-Katz, G., & Merone, L. et. al. The conclusion of their paper states:
> Based on a systematic review and meta-analysis of published evidence on COVID-19 until May, 2020,
the IFR of the disease across populations is 0.68% (0.53-0.82%). However, due to very high
heterogeneity in the meta-analysis, it is difficult to know if this represents the ‘true’ point estimate..._
There have been several reports that the IFR has lowered since late May, so it will be interesting to see if they rerun their metanalysis with June/July data. Their paper also makes the point that this could be an underestimate due to reporting issues (under-reported deaths). But likewise it could be an overestimate due to under-reporting infections (with so many asymptomatic cases). I am a little concerned over the lack of mention of that fact in the paper, which to me is as important as the under-reported deaths.
I understand your concern regarding long-term impacts. While we can't dismiss those concerns, it would be the only coronavirus in the history of known coronaviruses to do anything like that. So with our knowledge of this virus and the family of viruses, we can say that is "unlikely".
There are going to be a lot of deaths. I can't argue out of that reality. It is really unfortunate. We will all known somebody who dies from this, or at least are within a free degrees. The debate, in my opinion, isn't on preventing all deaths, it won't happen. It is how do we minimize death while preventing long term societal and economic damage. And how do we protect the most vulnerable without causing those damages elsewhere.
I know it sounds weird, but the age stratification of the IFR is a HUGE gift of this virus. It is more age stratified than the flu or other common pandemic sources. We are very lucky. Next time we may not be, so I hope we can learn from this on how to prepare for what we feared this was.
We had fewer people in 1918 so this would still mean millions of deaths if we let this run it's course without mitigation.
My other concern is whether this virus will have adverse effects later in life when one's immune system weakens.
This virus may very well drastically drop our overall life expectancy.
1. https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/hcp/planning-scena...