[nostrademons]

My understanding of the numbers is that < 1% of people will die. ~20% of cases require hospitalization (~10% including asymptomatic infections). It's that hospitalization number that's the worrisome. 10% of the population is way more than the hospital capacity of anywhere - in the U.S. we have about 1 bed for every 300 people, 0.3%.

Without hospitalization a fair number of the 9% that is hospitalized but won't die will instead just die. This is why you see death rates of close to 10% in areas like Lombardy or NYC where the hospital system was overloaded. And even if they don't, they're too sick to go to work. Most industries will have serious problems if 10% of employees call in sick. Then there are issues with people who have non-COVID illnesses (say car accidents) who won't be able to find beds because all the hospitals are filled with COVID patients.

When #FlattenTheCurve came out people had very legitimate criticisms that centered around them doing the math and computing that if we flattened the curve enough to avoid overwhelming the hospital system, we'd be locked down for the next 20 years. Realistically, the only solution was to lockdown, social distance, and wear masks long enough for a vaccine to come out, then vaccinate everyone who hadn't already gotten it. It looks like that'll actually be the outcome in wealthy coastal areas like the Bay Area or New England, but in the middle of the country we'll just overload the hospital system and see what happens.

[rwcarlsen]

The fear and media has convinced people like you that crazy things are true like a 20% hospitalization rate. But check out the cdc: https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/covid-data/covidvi... . It looks like the hospitalization rate of (cases) is hovering around 7%. That means the positive hospitalization rate of _infections_ (which would include people that never got tested and never went to a hospital, but also got covid) would be even considerably lower than that. Which would square with my experience - being acquainted with ~100 people that have had covid and knowing nobody that went to the hospital.

[disgruntledphd2]

Like, but that's still far more than the capacity of many Western medical systems.

It doesn't matter how much you overshoot medical capacity, because as soon as you do, death rates go way, way up.

[bosswipe]

So you're saying my media is evil and trying to make me fearful using false exaggerated information, but somehow your media has no motivation besides giving you perfect accurate information. I'm an easily fooled rube while you're able to float above it and extract only the good info .

[InitialLastName]

You've just cited the overriding mantra (for everyone) of our times.

"Everyone I disagree with is either acting in bad faith and trying to manipulate people or is a rube who's being manipulated. All of my opinions come exclusively from rational philosophical means achieved independently of any external media influences."