COVID19: Social Distancing might last to 2022

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Juliet Hotel said:
I have an essential job which provides the food you're putting on your table. If you would like those food providers to stay home, good luck eating. As for stress relief, you're allowed to relieve stress all you want so long as it does not put others at risk. We tried that plan and the people weren't able to manage the not putting others at risk part.
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Really not a lot of good evidence that the risk was particularly high or that the coercive interventions have reduced that risk in any substantial way.

I know the party line is that it was such a terrible risk that something draconian had to be done - but the numbers just aren’t bearing that out.
 
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PeterNSteinmetz said:
Really not a lot of good evidence that the risk was particularly high or that the coercive interventions have reduced that risk in any substantial way.

I know the party line is that it was such a terrible risk that something draconian had to be done - but the numbers just aren’t bearing that out.
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So what do you think we should do about it, and on what timeline?
 
tspear said:
@denverpilot

Instead of comparing to the flu; in min January invoke the Defense Production Act. We likely would not have enough now, but we would be three months further along in getting ready.

Tim
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No government can win on this thing. As one person joked today that I saw, “Let’s argue politics while the world is on fire!”

Again how do you do that without widespread panic and worse stupidity until people have time to digest it? You almost need a death count for people to take it seriously. Sad, but true. Italy was really when people “believed” for the most part. Chinese news was ... meh ... at getting a reaction.

Remember all we have for news is partisan outlets. Think about the CNN headline... lol. Or Fox. Or any of them — they only know partisan politics now, they haven’t “reported” on anything else as their lead stories in decades.

“OMGBBQ! The guys in the other color ties are forcing companies to do things and it’ll be wasteful and useless and ...” blah blah blah.

We also aren’t supposed to know most of what our government knows, most of the time. Right or wrong, governments are built on secrets and lies, and don’t really want to share much with the masses.

Trying not to get the thread locked.

It wouldn’t matter in the slightest who was in power for the aforementioned problem to occur. :)

Hero/celebrity worship, a distinct lack of introspection by adults who’ve ALL been out through some sort of bureaucratic dumbassery but still think there’s some Magic Hall of Justice superhero group waiting deep in the bowels of government awaiting to spring into world-saving action, all that...

We’ve effed up pulling tiny numbers of people the government actually cares about — out of guaranteed deadly situations — with the top military special forces in the world, more times than I can count on one hand in my lifetime.

The expectation they care in the slightest about you and me, is just completely misplaced wishing.

See: TFR. You don’t get one. LOL. :)

* Trying to be careful here, this commentary is about leadership, not the rank and file. There’s great people doing great work within government within the limits that... it’s government and they get whatever resources and direction the politicians give. But even they had nothing for this that could scale fast enough for exponential math. “Get everybody away from everybody else,” was all anybody had. It even became medical procedure if you were looking like you’d make it at a hospital... “Here’s O2, go home and stay in for two weeks. Get away from here. Come back if you can’t breathe again.”If that’s the best medical protocol, the politicians and government stood no chance.

In the meantime companies and actual leaders who have things like actual budget risk decisions, compared to politicians who’s only personal risk is they might have to leave office and go to work for a think tank for big bucks... are figuring stuff out.

As is fairly normal in ol’ ‘Merica. They’re pretty good at demanding anything they want from the generally useless politicians if regulation or something is in their way.

Walt Disney made children’s gas masks in WWII. LOL. Seriously. He figured kids would keep colorful ones of their characters on their faces and be less scared. Wasn’t government’s idea. :) (Although I’m sure ol’ Walt made bucks on it.)

Did get a laugh about Musk’s latest tirade today when CNN reported his ventilators never went anywhere. They did, after his disastrous build of bipap machines instead of ventilators.

He has zero temper control so it makes him mildly entertaining at least. Saying he wonders why they’re even still on the air, kinda isn’t wrong, from a total usefulness to society standpoint... but also hilarious. :)

I’m not even a Musk fan and he showed more leadership with one sentence than we’ll get out of hours and hours of the partisans and politically addicted adoring or hating fans of same. :)

I have a sticker that is more useful that the voting one! :)

Pretty sure guys like our egg man here, leading his place, and a fleet of truck drivers, nurses, and docs, are the real essential folk. Quite a few real entrenched emergency managers and such all working butts off too, right now.

Politicians are still the side show. Pretty impressive how they slapped together 1200 pages of deals for their business buddies right before high tailing it to their houses and hiding, though. Almost like... they had donor lists ready... :)

02dcbc6fe4449eacbd54e3383efabc69.jpg
 
By the way to lighten the above...

I can’t think of anybody who doesn’t enjoy this particular role reversal — other than IRS agents.

And even they don’t really care. Paycheck cashed the same whether they’re taking in or handing out. LOL.

126187b5e536b729af7c56a92d48d5a8.jpg
 
Matthew said:
Suppose COVID is seasonal, we'll see a drop during the summer, followed by a return in the fall. Then what, go back to lock downs again?
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Testing at a massive scale. Tracking. Isolating just those who test positive or came in contact with them.

If we can prepared by winter to do that, and we have just some social distancing, then lock downs at a wide scale won't be needed much. I hope.
 
Palmpilot said:
So what do you think we should do about it, and on what timeline?
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In brief, continue to make the best recommendations based on available evidence and immediately remove all coercive measures.

Focus available resources on better studies and immediately remove barriers to provision of services and products.

Do not provide any more financial handouts, aka “stimulus”, and reduce taxes to stimulate the economy.

In other words, let the free market and people’s own judgements decide.
 
Juliet Hotel said:
As someone who lives in MI and is hearing lots of these complaints, I've got some thoughts on this. Do you know why murder is illegal? Do you understand why we have a law on the books that makes murder illegal? Its because people kill other people. The chronology wasn't that everyone got along and no person ever killed another person or even thought about doing it but despite this, some overzealous law maker said well we'd better make it illegal to kill another person just in case it might happen sometime in the future. That ain't how it happened. People were killing other people so we NEEDED to make it illegal. If no person had ever murdered another person in the history of man, murder would not be illegal anywhere. The idea to make it illegal would never occur to anyone.

So the Governor sees a need to create an EO mandating social distancing. Essential business' can stay open, people can still engage in recreational activities so long as those activities allow you to keep your distance from one another. Simple enough. And if that gotten it done, there would have been no need to impose any additional restrictions. But that didn't get it done.

Boating is a great way to be outside with lots of distance between you and other people. If you live on the lake and your boat is tied up at your dock in your back yard, you can go out on the water and never get within 100' of another person. But the vast majority of Michigan boaters DO NOT live on the lake with their boat tied up at their own dock. Which means they need to use the boat ramp. Along with every other schmuck with a boat on a trailer. And while its entirely possible to use the boat ramp and stay at least 6' from other people the entire time, the fine citizens of our great state proved that large numbers of them were unable or unwilling to do that.

Same with motorcycles. Get out on the road on your bike by yourself and you'll be isolated from everyone. But we don't like to ride alone, we like to do it in groups. And while we very easily keep distance from one another when we're going down the road, riding with a group of other bikers usually involves stopping with that group and hanging out somewhere. Again, entirely possible to still do that and keep distance from one another. But again, our actions showed we were unable or unwilling to do that.

So do the increased restrictions suck? Sure do. But if I'm looking for someone to blame, I'm not pointing my finger at the Governor. She made it clear what needed to happen when the first order was signed. We the people were unable or unwilling to comply so guess what? More restrictions came. Shocking. People act they never had parents who made rules for them and then made more rules when they found a way to get around the first rule.
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The government is not my parent
 
NoHeat said:
Testing at a massive scale. Tracking. Isolating just those who test positive or came in contact with them.

If we can prepared by winter to do that, and we have just some social distancing, then lock downs at a wide scale won't be needed much. I hope.
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Testing *should* be on a much larger scale by then. The tests themselves will have had a chance to be validated, and production should have had a chance to crank out millions of them. I hope.
 
Greg Bockelman said:
So, the point of social distancing is to "flatten the curve", correct? The whole point of "flattening the curve" is to prevent overwhelming the healthcare system, correct? But I am hearing stories that in many places, if not most places, the healthcare system is by no means overwhelmed. In other words, people are not being hospitalized in the vast numbers predicted. So why flatten the curve if it is just prolonging the pain, so to say? Why not ease the restrictions a bit?

I have always understood a certain percentage of the people WILL contract Covid-19 or whatever they want to call it. Why prolong the pain if the healthcare system is capable of treating more cases than are being presented? Open up the economy for those of us whose risk factor is pretty low and get on with it. Our economy cannot tolerate too much more of this before we have a total collapse. That is not beneficial to anybody.
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Agree, and I agree with protecting the hospitals. But if hospitals are not flooded and we are still shut down either the goalposts have moved or there is a new agenda.
 
PeterNSteinmetz said:
In brief, continue to make the best recommendations based on available evidence and immediately remove all coercive measures.

Focus available resources on better studies and immediately remove barriers to provision of services and products.

Do not provide any more financial handouts, aka “stimulus”, and reduce taxes to stimulate the economy.

In other words, let the free market and people’s own judgements decide.
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What impact do you think your proposal would have on the number of COVID-19 hospitalizations and deaths?
 
Palmpilot said:
Here's the actual order:

https://www.michigan.gov/whitmer/0,9309,7-387-90499_90705-525182--,00.html

I don't have an opinion on whether the Michigan policies are good or bad, but for the sake of accuracy, the restriction on carpet, flooring, furniture, garden centers, plant nurseries, and paint at "critical infrastructure" stores only apply to in-person sales in stores of more than 50,000 square feet.

I haven't found a specific mention of fishing, but it doesn't appear to be in the list of permitted reasons to leave home.
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Some of those stores have roped off those sections, which results in packing MORE people into a SMALLER space. Show me the science on how THAT prevents the spread <sigh>
 
Datadriver said:
Some of those stores have roped off those sections, which results in packing MORE people into a SMALLER space. Show me the science on how THAT prevents the spread <sigh>
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I think you may have a valid point there. The order requires the stores to limit the number of people in the store to a specified number. So if you divide that number by the reduced square footage that is available to the public, the result is an increase in the number of people per hundred square feet.
 
Palmpilot said:
What impact do you think your proposal would have on the number of COVID-19 hospitalizations and deaths?
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Hospitalizations are the only real variable.

Death rate remains unchanged if consistent medical care is available in any particular area, before externalities like “best treatments” or way further out, vaccine.

This is the unfortunate math of something assumed to be zero-immunity and no knowledge of why it’s hitting some who are in normal health, harder than others.

Flattening the curve doesn’t change the area under the curve.
 
Once it warms up a bit more, plan to put miles on the motorcycle. I have a fresh oil change, even shined it up some.

I’ve been meaning to fish more, same thing, just a tad warmer weather, and water.

Since I’m recovered from those 8.2% IPA’s the other eve, trying to be more productive today.
 
deonb said:
Only true when comparing 2 curves with identical end values.
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If no other variables change, there’s no difference in death rate, just infection rate.

Flattening is designed to slow hospital overload. Once access to care is the same for all, death rate remains constant.

Variables that change the death rate, aren’t caused by distancing. They’re new knowledge about treatment. Which, so far, we have little change in.
 
@denverpilot

Taiwan did not have mass panic, South Korea did not have mass panic. Germany has not had mass panic.... as you implied, we do not trust the leadership. And this is a self inflicted wound. When our leaders stick to facts plainly and carefully, defer to experts and do not dismiss them; we do not have panic. For example look at the very plain and factual announcement by President Bush to stop Iraq for Dessert Shield or his son for Dessert Storm. Both prevented mass panic (regardless of how many people feel about either action, both Presidents carried it off well).

Also, in terms of flattening the curve. If you spread the length of time for the disease to go through society. You increase the chance pharma has a chance to find something which reduces the mortality or permanent disability caused by the disease.

Tim
 
denverpilot said:
If no other variables change, there’s no difference in death rate, just infection rate.

Flattening is designed to slow hospital overload. Once access to care is the same for all, death rate remains constant.

Variables that change the death rate, aren’t caused by distancing. They’re new knowledge about treatment. Which, so far, we have little change in.
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Actually, starting viral load is directly reduced by physical distancing, even while remaining under the same curve. And seriousness and death rate is directly impacted by eventual viral load. A smaller initial infectious dose gives the body longer to mount an immune response before it is overwhelmed. If that wasn't the case, then small-dose live virus vaccines wouldn't work. Unfortunately because the discrepancy between CFR and IFR is so large right now, even a 500% more or less effective prophylactic step can easily go unnoticed. Fog of war.

But that's neither here nor there for the purpose of this thread.

For the purpose of this thread, the OP (the Harvard model) states that to achieve herd immunity without a vaccine, and without overwhelming the healthcare system, would take until 2022. That seems like a reasonable deduction. That means the flat curve runs until its natural end in 2022. Alternatively, without distancing the steep curve runs until its natural end let's say in August 2020. And I agree in that case the areas under those 2 curves are the same (which I think is your point).

However, there is very likely an earlier exit point to the flatter curve. Let's say it's July 2021. Either we will have a protein subunit vaccine by then, or we give up and just go with an Live Attenuated Virus vaccine. The US is not testing an LAV vaccine, but thankfully India and China is. An LAV vaccine will have associated fatalities and complications, but if the alternative is running the curve to the end anyway, people will line up in droves to take an LAV vaccine with a 0.01% fatality rate than risking full-blown COVID-19 at 1%.
 
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Everskyward said:
... I live in a city which is fairly densely populated, with many people using pubic transportation, ...
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Heh, heh, heh....she said "pubic transportation..."

Sorry... just read through this entire thread, and needed some levity.

Locally, in the central NYS area, several of our hospitals are so empty they are on the brink of bankruptcy..

https://www.syracuse.com/coronaviru...irus-cripples-cny-hospitals-experts-warn.html

Also in our area, the new estimate done by Upstate Medical has over 8000 people infected with 22 deaths, which calculates to a mortality rate of 0.2%... far from the oft-touted 3% found in most media coverage.

https://www.syracuse.com/coronaviru...y-likely-had-the-virus-and-never-knew-it.html

There never existed a more perfect example of a cure being far worse than the disease.
 
tspear said:
@denverpilot

Taiwan did not have mass panic, South Korea did not have mass panic. Germany has not had mass panic.... as you implied, we do not trust the leadership. And this is a self inflicted wound. When our leaders stick to facts plainly and carefully, defer to experts and do not dismiss them; we do not have panic. For example look at the very plain and factual announcement by President Bush to stop Iraq for Dessert Shield or his son for Dessert Storm. Both prevented mass panic (regardless of how many people feel about either action, both Presidents carried it off well).

Also, in terms of flattening the curve. If you spread the length of time for the disease to go through society. You increase the chance pharma has a chance to find something which reduces the mortality or permanent disability caused by the disease.
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You focused on the mass panic part and missed the partisan morons part which is a much much larger problem here. :)

As far as “finding things”, I’ve been clear multiple times that additional time under the curve CAN allow externalities to change. Maybe you’ve also missed that. We learn about the thing. But it’s probably not moving the needle much on a death rate in low single digits percentage-wise. Death rate is going to remain about the same without a bigger externality.

Some with super high risk factors may have to choose whether they’re hiding from it for a long time, or getting infected under supervised medical care, in the “not so distant” future.

deonb said:
Actually, starting viral load is directly reduced by physical distancing, even while remaining under the same curve. And seriousness and death rate is directly impacted by eventual viral load. A smaller initial infectious dose gives the body longer to mount an immune response before it is overwhelmed. If that wasn't the case, then small-dose live virus vaccines wouldn't work. Unfortunately because the discrepancy between CFR and IFR is so large right now, even a 500% more or less effective prophylactic step can easily go unnoticed. Fog of war.

But that's neither here nor there for the purpose of this thread.

For the purpose of this thread, the OP (the Harvard model) states that to achieve herd immunity without a vaccine, and without overwhelming the healthcare system, would take until 2022. That seems like a reasonable deduction. That means the flat curve runs until its natural end in 2022. Alternatively, without distancing the steep curve runs until its natural end let's say in August 2020. And I agree in that case the areas under those 2 curves are the same (which I think is your point).

However, there is very likely an earlier exit point to the flatter curve. Let's say it's July 2021. Either we will have a protein subunit vaccine by then, or we give up and just go with an Live Attenuated Virus vaccine. The US is not testing an LAV vaccine, but thankfully India and China is. An LAV vaccine will have associated fatalities and complications, but if the alternative is running the curve to the end anyway, people will line up in droves to take an LAV vaccine with a 0.01% fatality rate than risking full-blown COVID-19 at 1%.
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Yup. Those are some of the externality (external to the basic distancing model numbers) things that might change the numbers.

Widespread tests also turns it from Schrodinger’s Virus into something one can make a different set of rational decisions about.

Assuming antibodies and such, we’ll soon have a significant number of people who are done with the thing and ready to move on. Right now even the ones who know they’re done, are hiding it still. Wearing masks, playing the part, to keep others from panicking and such.

One guy joked elsewhere when someone wasn’t quite believing the concept that everyone likely gets infected eventually... and asked if that meant more would die...

“How’s your BMI?”

LOL. Math is harsh across the board on this one. Welcome to systems engineering!

“It’s going to break, right ... here... but it’ll run longer if you do this this and this and maybe we can redesign that part and replace it with scheduled maintenance before it fails.” :)
 
deonb said:
However, there is very likely an earlier exit point to the flatter curve. Let's say it's July 2021. Either we will have a protein subunit vaccine by then, or we give up and just go with an Live Attenuated Virus vaccine. The US is not testing an LAV vaccine, but thankfully India and China is. An LAV vaccine will have associated fatalities and complications, but if the alternative is running the curve to the end anyway, people will line up in droves to take an LAV vaccine with a 0.01% fatality rate than risking full-blown COVID-19 at 1%.
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This country, and the rest of the world, will not be recognizable if we continue this house arrest scheme until 2021, or whenever the agenda-based technocrats sound the "All Clear" and let everyone out of their hovels. There are forces that celebrate that outcome.

Where are the vaccines for SARS, MERS, HIV......?
 
Palmpilot said:
What impact do you think your proposal would have on the number of COVID-19 hospitalizations and deaths?
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I think that total mortality and morbidity, including all causes, would likely be decreased by this when averaged over a year or two.

In terms of Covid-19, I would also expect a decrease in hospitalizations and deaths in the course of a month or two as obstacles to better testing, treatments, etc took effect.

However, I think any detailed predictions are quite tenuous at this time given the poor data we have on this particular illness.

What I am more confident of is that not using coercive measures, when one is not certain the person or persons they are being used against are an imminent threat, will work out best for everyone in the long run.
 
paflyer said:
Must be great to be part of the "Essential" elite.

The people who support the un-Constitutional lockdowns also failed, or never took, ECO 101, and also have secure jobs that are still paying the bills.
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Who said my job was still paying bills? I said I'm still working. I never said I was still getting paid. We cut office staff paychecks and hours. But we didn't cut workload so I still go in every day as normal, I just don't make nearly the same paycheck I did before all this.
 
PeterNSteinmetz said:
Really not a lot of good evidence that the risk was particularly high or that the coercive interventions have reduced that risk in any substantial way.

I know the party line is that it was such a terrible risk that something draconian had to be done - but the numbers just aren’t bearing that out.
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PeterNSteinmetz said:
I think that total mortality and morbidity, including all causes, would likely be decreased by this when averaged over a year or two.

In terms of Covid-19, I would also expect a decrease in hospitalizations and deaths in the course of a month or two as obstacles to better testing, treatments, etc took effect.

However, I think any detailed predictions are quite tenuous at this time given the poor data we have on this particular illness.

What I am more confident of is that not using coercive measures, when one is not certain the person or persons they are being used against are an imminent threat, will work out best for everyone in the long run.
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It sounds like the bottom line of what you're saying is that there's not good enough evidence to show which approach is more effective, yours, or the one being pursued currently. I'm not sure why "coercive" matters, other than to add emotional impact to the argument, since all laws are by nature coercive.
 
Someone pointed out we are roughly at 5000 deaths a day.

So just simple math... 1% death rate is 3.2M...

Divided by...

At current social distancing we would need to maintain it for 1.75 years to hold that death rate.

If it weren’t still accelerating.

The math just sucks on this thing.

The marketing campaign and lockdowns seem to be working for knocking back exponential growth, but as the growth rate in infections and deaths becomes linear, it’s still an incredible number of dead people.

Someone accused me elsewhere of saying I *was okay with* a 9/11 sized event daily. LOL. I was like, not at all... I’m just doing the basic math here...
 
paflyer said:
This country, and the rest of the world, will not be recognizable if we continue this house arrest scheme until 2021, or whenever the agenda-based technocrats sound the "All Clear" and let everyone out of their hovels. There are forces that celebrate that outcome.

Where are the vaccines for SARS, MERS, HIV......?
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There are degrees of social distancing that isn't just stay-at-home lockdown. Many/most Asian countries follow lesser distancing. People there just follow certain basic societal rules and allow tracking.

Unfortunately tracking is unimaginable here. People here would rather see millions of people around them die than have the government know that they've stopped by 7/11 on the way home from work. Or at least know that the government knows.

So I suspect instead we'll have a per-region few-months on, few-months off type of thing to try and throttle the infection rate to about 2 million a month. I kind'a wish there were more formal borders between states so that people can choose what level of control they're willing to live with for themselves, but alas. It is what it is.

On your second question:
  • SARS-1 has been wiped out
  • MERS doesn't spread. If MERS actually spread like SARS-2, not only would we have stay at home, we'd have forced individual quarantine. With welded doors and everything.
  • HIV spread is mostly controllable via individual choices. We're all for individual responsibility I'm sure.
 
deonb said:
Where are you seeing that? Is this yesterday's WSJ number? (It seems wrong).
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denverpilot said:
The other person provided it as the current US daily at like 4600? I didn’t check it.
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I should clarify. I didn’t check it because it wasn’t worth not using his number over there. LOL. Would have just slowed the basic math point down to argue his number.
 
paflyer said:
This country, and the rest of the world, will not be recognizable if we continue this house arrest scheme until 2021, or whenever the agenda-based technocrats sound the "All Clear" and let everyone out of their hovels. There are forces that celebrate that outcome.

Where are the vaccines for SARS, MERS, HIV......?
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SARS and MERS both burned out. The disease is so virulent that it was much easier to contain.
H1N1 on the other hand is part of the annual flu shot.
To end the "house arrest" as you state really only requires that we get ahead of the curve via extensive testing. This allows a much more surgical approach instead of the sledge hammer.

Tim
 
denverpilot said:
Someone pointed out we are roughly at 5000 deaths a day.

So just simple math... 1% death rate is 3.2M...

Divided by...

At current social distancing we would need to maintain it for 1.75 years to hold that death rate.

If it weren’t still accelerating.

The math just sucks on this thing.
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Exactly. And I fear that the public has been sold a bill of goods on "the lockdown". Minimize the wave and all that. But it wasn't a wave with a clear start and finish. It is more like the tide, which has a much longer cycle than a wave. I submit that we've reduced the high tide, but we're still gonna be in 5,000 death a day floodwaters for a year or two. That isn't what people listening to the news media heard. They heard "Lock yourself up for a month and the worst will be past."

I think all social distancing is going to do is (maybe) hold the level of new cases flat, as opposed to the exponential growth we were seeing weeks ago. So we're gonna average 5,000 deaths a day until something changes, whether we do a *serious* lockdown, find a vaccine, develop herd immunity, summer weather intervenes, or we mitigate this thing some other way.
 
Palmpilot said:
It sounds like the bottom line of what you're saying is that there's not good enough evidence to show which approach is more effective, yours, or the one being pursued currently. I'm not sure why "coercive" matters, other than to add emotional impact to the argument, since all laws are by nature coercive.
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Please note that my suggested policy involves removing the coercions. So that would be no laws requiring people to do things regarding Covid-19 they do not otherwise wish to do.

So big difference in coercion level between my proposal and what is presently being done.

Practically, in the long run, I think there is very good evidence that lack of coercion in the absence of imminent threat results in better outcomes for everyone, even if that might be difficult to predict in a particular case. So we should default to lack of coercion absent clear evidence of an imminent threat.

But at that level, we are drifting into politics, so we best discuss that in another forum if you want.
 
murphey said:
The problem with the numbers at this point is the Mark Twain Theorem....There are lies, damned lies and statistics. Until we have mass testing to get realistic numbers of who has the virus and how severe, everything is just hand waving. Those being tested are those with symptoms which skews the curve.
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Oh yeah, statistics can be used to show all types of slants.

With the data on this so far I think more testing is just going to make this look better. Way better. Right now we're only getting numbers for those tested and only those with symptoms are getting tested. Worse, many with symptoms are not getting tested and just told to go home and self quarantine and only go to a hospital if they start having breathing problems.

What we are seeing from other broader tests are that there are many more people that are getting infected, but with little to no symptoms. The tests on the aircraft carrier recently in the news is showing 60% of the positives are asymptomatic, at least not at that time; symptoms could show up later, as they may have just recently become infected. The tests in Iceland two or three weeks ago showed that 50% of the positives were asymptomatic.

These two things mean the fatality rate is lower than being reported. It's still high. We'd need more like 90% asymptomatic to even approach Influenza. I haven't seen data on how Influenza hits those with underlying medical conditions, just not looking enough for it. COVID-19 is hitting those people hard. Unlike Influenza, COVID-19 has hardly impacted the very young (infants to toddlers). Influenza gets them like it does the elderly.
 
Santa Clara County, CA tested 3,300 residents for the presence of antibodies.

https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.04.14.20062463v1

https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.04.14.20062463v1.full.pdf+html

>>>
These prevalence estimates represent a range between 48,000 and 81,000 people infected in Santa Clara County by early April, 50-85-fold more than the number of confirmed cases. Conclusions The population prevalence of SARS-CoV-2 antibodies in Santa Clara County implies that the infection is much more widespread than indicated by the number of confirmed cases. Population prevalence estimates can now be used to calibrate epidemic and mortality projections.
<<<
 
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