The 'lethality' rate for covid-19 is so overblown it isn't funny. Yet the media keeps reporting on it.
'Confirmed cases' are most likely the vast minority of the actual cases that have occurred. Most people probably wouldn't report it, many would not even have realised that they had had it.
So far the deaths are not even outside the annual fluctuation in seasonal flu deaths (thats everyday normal flu, not including pandemic flu deaths) which the CDC reckons as something like 390,000 to 640,000 worldwide every year.
The real interesting thing would be to see how many of these covid-19 deaths would have occurred anyway with this seasons flu. someone in extremely poor health, going to die soon anyway catches covid-19 and its knocks them off their perch. Similar to what flu does every year.
I get the whole 'flattening the curve' thing, fair enough. but fuck me dead this whole shit is being blown up so far its ridiculous. People talking about this over-reaction going on for months, let alone years are delusional. Once enough of the population has gotten it which is happening naturally we can go back to normal and this will be just another nasty bug out there like all the others.
Part of the issue is that hospital beds aren't yet flooded (at least not in the US). Once that happens we get to actually see what the real death rate ends up being. Because once the critical care beds are filled, anyone new who actually needs them (either for COVID-19 or for anything else) ends up being a corpse.
There is an argument for just letting the virus run wild and ignoring it, accepting that a great many people are going to end up dead. Of course, that has political consequences that are entirely unacceptable in any nation (and especially in a democracy with Presidential elections this year). So the world is getting shut down for a month or three and damn all the
many consequences of doing so.
Of course, it doesn't help that government responses have been pretty meh. An act of Congress to suspend all mortgage payments and rents for the duration, and suspend all late fees for utility payments (including phone & internet) along with forbidding companies from ending service for non-payment could be passed with ease if Congress was willing to do so.
Order the Fed to keep US banks & financial institutions solvent by extending them zero interest loans to make up the shortfalls in missed mortgage payments.
By act of Congress, end all elective medical procedures - if it isn't an emergency then no doctors for you. Enforce triage - anything without likely permanent side effects means that you aren't being admitted and/or receiving medical care and have the federal government simply pick up all medical bills of US citizens not covered by health insurance. And tell the health insurance industry that attempting to play games with non-payment will see their charters revoked and them making an enemy of the federal government.
By act of Congress, suspend all late fees and interest accrual for Credit Cards for the duration.
Those are the kinds of things that Congress
should be doing if they really want to ameliorate the economic costs of self isolation.
www.mlive.com
www.reuters.com
www.breitbart.com
wgntv.com
