The Virus "Good News" Thread.
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Alex Berenson (NYT):
Let's see how well this one ages: CDC says more than 20M cases
Well, it means nearly one in every ten Americans have already had the coronavirus, which is a fairly gigantic finding. It also means many of these infected people had such mild cases they felt no need to receive treatment. In fact, it probably means the majority of the people who have had the coronavirus in this country never even knew they had it.
But it also means, and this is perhaps the most significant data point, the coronavirus is far less deadly than we’ve been led to believe.
In fact, the CDC study suggests the all age death rate from the virus is roughly .5%. Meaning 99.5% of all people infected with the coronavirus, regardless of age, recover. (There are other studies that suggest the .5% death rate is still far too high, but it’s still significant that the virus has a 99.5% recovery rate per the CDC).
Now as a point of fact we know that deaths from the coronavirus are heavily slanted towards nursing homes and the elderly — most states report over half of all deaths in nursing homes — so this means, as was reported via a study by Stanford scientist John Ioannadis, most people in this country are under a greater risk of death driving to and from work than they are from the coronavirus.
Herd immunity with lower threshold?
Mathematicians from the University of Nottingham and University of Stockholm devised a simple model categorising people into groups reflecting age and social activity level. When differences in age and social activity are incorporated in the model, the herd immunity level reduces from 60% to 43%. The figure of 43% should be interpreted as an illustration rather than an exact value or even a best estimate. The research has been published today in Science.
Oh, an "illustration" rather than an estimate. Le sigh.