How can a disease with a 1% mortality rate shut down the U.S? Answered by Franklin Veaux:

[Blue_true]

78. We have some empirical data that inadvertently got produced.

When Arizona and Florida went from partial lockdown to open (which both have pulled back from), the positivity rates went from around 3-4% up to close to 20% (I think Florida reached 19% before some restrictions were reimposed and the rate fell back to around 15-16% now). That data actually can be extrapolated with some degree of accuracy, it would imply that if everything remains open, from 1 in 5 to 1 in 6.3 people would contract the virus over a short-term (Florida was open for around 2 months). My guess is the annualized rates for a fully open country would run at about one of those levels, maybe somewhat worse. Something like 60-70% of people that tested positive were asymptomatic, if the higher level is used, that says in a country of 330 million people around 15-18 million people would show some level of symptoms, from mild to severe. We also know that around 5% of the 52-66 million will die based upon existing data, that works out to 2.5-3.3 million people, a little less than 1% to 1% of the national population. Now it is possible that Florida and Arizona are not representative because they are hot places with heavy AC use, which has been shown to be a contributing factor to spread, but even taking that into account, the numbers work out to something horrible.

Where am I? My belief, and it is only a belief, is that if everything opens up the way Trump seem to want it, the national death rate of Americans will run about 0.4-0.6% of the population, with millions more having shorter lifespans and severe disabilities during what is left of their lives.