I can't wrap my head around how there are so many out there that still believe this is a hoax and a contrived media driven effort or politically partisan effort to control people. Dave, I truly believe you are correct when you stated that the only way to have it hit home is to have someone close to them either get terribly sick or pass away due to the virus. All you have to do is talk with medical professionals who have dealt with the virus and you would need no further evidence that the virus is real and deals real harm. My son's wife is a nurse and she has already had one scare of catching it. Fortunately she was negative.
It's a backlash to what they see as overreaction. I don't believe the majority of them believe it's truly a hoax (although there are some). They simply believe it's a "hoax" in relation to what they see as a disproportionate over reaction. Do you recall back in at the end of June social media picked up on the CDC planning scenarios that estimate the Infection fatality rate?
IFR is clearly the percentage of people that catch Covid who die.
The social media huha at the time said "CDC says the IFR is 0.2". And in the usual fashion you can see the media wheeling out it's "experts" to sow confusion and doubt about what the CDC says in articles
like this one.
They point out that there are 5 scenarios with 0.26 being the best case and 1% being the worst. With their "best guess" being 0.4%. And they find some professor guy who says that the USA is underestimating deaths (even though the CDC is using international data).
The CDC updates this data all the time.
Their latest figures from July say the IFR is 0.5% to 0.8% with their best guess being 0.65%. As you can see they have narrowed the window as they feel more confident on the number.
If you are under 50 without comorbidity it's 0.3%. If you are under 50 and morbidly obese it's 0.5%. The vast, vast, vast majority of global deaths are 75+ and already ill with other diseases. They make up 50% of all deaths. If you take out the 75+ age group the overall IFR obviously halves.
The IFR for the 57-59 Flu pandemic was 0.67%. But it killed everyone in all age groups. It was much worse than Covid. It killed kids of all ages. It killed pregnant women. The largest increases in mortality were children and young adults.
The IFR of the 68-69 flu pandemic was lower at 0.4% estimated, but thats largely because there was a lot of immunity from 10 years before. Again, it killed all age ranges, including many more kids and young adults than Covid.
99.35% of people that have Covid survive. 95% of them never even see a hospital. 40% never even know they have it. 50% of deaths are people already near to death.
And for this the world have created trillions of dollars of debt to burden onto our children. For every 80 year old saved we are putting 300 working age adults out of work (it will likely be much higher). Every person out of work is a home lost. A child put into poverty. More deaths across all age ranges from heart disease, stress, suicide. Every tax dollar lost is starving services of the money to survive. Deaths from cancer and other serious illnesses will obliterate Covid deaths. But as long as nobody is counting too seriously right?
Give me Covid and I'll take my 99.35% odds so that my kids aren't saddled with the huge debt. So that hundreds of millions worldwide can keep their jobs and homes. So that millions don't die of cancer and other illnesses going undetected. So millions of kids don't fall below the poverty line. So that services that help those most in need can remain funded.
And if my grandparent were alive they would say the same thing. Like their parents in '68 and their grandparents in '57. Neither of which shot themselves in the foot over a very similar pandemic.
