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by hedora 1884 days ago
In the US, 33-50% of the population apparently had antibodies pre-vaccination, and we apparently did a terrible job keeping it out of nursing homes (so the percentage that caught it that died was higher than it would have been across the whole population).

So, it would have killed 2-3x more people, max. There were strategies that were developed after the 1918 pandemic that probably would have saved more people than the lockdown at much lower cost, but they were ignored by the politicians. The basic idea was to focus all resources on protecting the vulnerable, and let the disease run its course quickly. Effectively protecting the vulnerable during extended lockdowns is extremely difficult, and the COVID lockdown was no exception.
3 comments
runako 1884 days ago
> 2-3x more people, max

Rounding, that's possibly another 1-2 million people. Those are big numbers!

Also one quibble in that most of the US did not have an extended lockdown. Here in GA ours lasted basically a month. As others have said, people voluntarily stayed home, in part because the exponents of letting the disease "run its course" tended to exhibit a level of comfort with millions of deaths that perhaps is not widely shared in the population.

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majormajor 1884 days ago
> So, it would have killed 2-3x more people, max.

You are very cavalier with somewhere around 1.1-1.6 million extra deaths, to date. That's your GOOD number?

If that's your anti-intervention argument, I'm unconvinced. Saving a million lives is worth a lot to me.

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sgt101 1884 days ago
>In the US, 33-50% of the population apparently had antibodies pre-vaccination

Where did that number come from?

I have read more like 8% (https://www.thelancet.com/article/S0140-6736(20)32009-2/full...)

So - 2 to 3x... Nope. 8 - 10x.

What I want to know is why you have constructed this belief and want to propagate it when it is refuted by a google search in 10 seconds flat?

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wk_end 1883 days ago
Your article is from last September, using data from last July. It only takes ten seconds to google, but I guess it takes a few more to check timestamps or think critically about the results.

Using more current antibody data, the CDC released updated estimates yesterday [0] that there have been ~115 million actual COVID infections in the US. That makes the 2x-3x number pretty reasonable (especially since herd immunity is supposed to kick in around 70%).

[0] https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/cases-updates/burd...

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maxerickson 1884 days ago
I wonder if the theory that previously infected people are reacting more strongly to the first doses is true?

I had no real reaction to the first one and a day of increased fatigue so far with the second.

Anecdotally, many more people are having stronger reactions to the second.

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