General Discussion
Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsCovid-19 Under Reporting and Herd immunity
In the USA there is a reasonable estimate that there are roughly 50 to 60% again more deaths caused by corona as are reported.
World wide that matches up pretty well.
Some places, such as NYC are appearing to be even worse. The above link and this one give data on this.
When comparing covid-19 deaths, there are a few more things to account for, so the odds are the death toll of covid is much higher. First off, traffic fatalities are way down. If deaths are up and traffic deaths are down, that is a rather huge addition to the deaths caused by covid. Since covid is killing old people, people with heart, lung issues, and even high blood pressure, there are even more deaths that might well have occurred on their own, but due to covid, the victims died a bit earlier, and did not get to have their relatives around them or a funeral.
If you take the deaths worldwide, currently 216,281 by https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/ and use the 2% death rate that has been proposed for covid-19, you get 10,814,050 infected to the point where death would occur, worldwide. That is a lot larger than the number 3,118,871 that is the current reported amount of infections.
In the USA, we have a record of 58,341 deaths caused by covid-19 If we add 60% to that we get 93,345. This is not taking reduced traffic fatalities into account, but we are getting closer to the actual death numbers. If the 2% death rate is correct, this means that in the USA we have at least 4,667,280 who have been infected long enough to have died from it if they were going to die from it.
Census.gov gives a current USA population of 329,571,239. This would lead us to an estimate that 1.4% of the US population has been infected to the point where death would have been caused.
Herd immunity would probably require 70% of the population to be immune. Herd immunity caused by infection and not inoculation would mean that in the USA 230,699,867 have to become sick and 4,613,997 people would die. It will also give the disease lots more chances to mutate and infect our pets so it can mutate and perhaps become a permanent feature.
Herd immunity is an even worse idea than bleach injections. You would have to be stupid enough to vote for a Republican to get behind such a insane idea.
Voltaire2
(13,009 posts)PurgedVoter
(2,216 posts)Not only is that smarter, it is more compassionate.
dawg
(10,624 posts)Even with very generous assumptions, we would still need to lose many times more Americans than we have already in order to even come close.
I feel like most of the country, even the people on our side, are still living in a state of denial.