en.m.wikipedia.org
In the UK the fatality rate is 12.6%
One of the key differences between people who are overly fearful of the virus and those who are not, is that the former are often less familiar with the facts and often believe things that are incorrect.
What you appear to be quoting is a reported case fatality rate, not the actual infection mortality rate. Many people who had it were not tested and may never know if they had it.
The true mortality rate is clearly going to be less than 1%, but it varies massively with age; if you take healthy under 65s it's almost certainly less than 0.1%. As time goes on, we are able to estimate this a bit more accurately.
The mortality rate is almost certainly massively overstated. There's huge numbers of asymptomatic people and people who caught it early on and were never tested. They won't be in the equation.
Absolutely.
Unless a vaccine is found and given to everyone, the disease will be present and continually spreading for a while yet. The lockdown we had was never about stopping people getting COVID-19, it was about stopping the NHS being overwhelmed with intensive care cases after their capacity was cut to nothing.
The purpose does appear to have changed after that though
The BBC's website a copule of days ago said the average deaths per day due to covid was 9. To me that looks remarkably low, how many die on the roads each day, through accidents at home, or even through "normal" influenza? Of course it's 9 more than if covid didn't exist.....but how many of those 9 had underlying causes and a dose of flu would have caused their deaths?
That's a good point. We have had some very good 'flu years recently, which will have increased the number susceptible to severe Covid19.
On writing that, I admit that if you have a serious case of covid, hospitalised or at home, it's awful, far worse than even the worst flu...
Not necessarily; people can die of 'flu.
On an average year in England alone around 12 under 15s die of 'flu, but these deaths are not considered anywhere near as newsworthy as a Covid19 death would be.
It appears that Covid19 is generally (but not always) worse than 'flu for older people, but the reverse may actually be true in younger people.
but my question is - how many of the new cases are that bad now? I can't find those stats anywhere, and if the vast majority of covid patients have moderate symptoms at worst - ie a bad cough/high temperature for a few days, then what is the purpose of all these protections?
The aim appears to be to suppress the virus to very low levels, almost to eliminate it (but it cannot actually be eliminated).
I've no idea as a layman whether we need full lockdown or to be completely released, or any station inbetween. All I see as that layman is I can't find anyone - be it a polititian, scientist, reporter etc that doesn't have an agenda one way or the other.
That's because the results will be extremely damaging to some; for example lockdowns and severe restrictions are better for middle class people in cushy work from home jobs with large houses and gardens, but can be absolutely terrible for young peoples' mental and physical health and livelihoods.
You are pulling out the same flawed argument. It is not about the risk to the individual, but about the population scale consequences. Unfortunately there seem to be a lot of people with very individualistic mindsets, that cannot distinguish between the self and social consequences. Hence why it has been said that such people should stare at a mirror all day, because what stares back is the only thing that matters to them.
What about the social consequences to young people of all these restrictions? What about the obesity crisis? What about mental health? What about peoples livelihoods?
You talk about "logic" and claim another members logic is "flawed", but I could just as easily argue that your logic is flawed. We are never going to get consensus on this, and it's very difficult to be logical when (as described above) the effects of any particular strategy over any other strategy will be very different for different people depending on their circumstances.
Millions of jobs may be lost -"better than dying on a ventilator eh hun?"
Mask wearing is pointless - "you're killing people"
Yes social media is infested with people who make those claims. I've even seen people claim that people with exemptions are being "selfish" for not wearing masks, which I find an abhorrent thing to say. The ventilator argument is absurd; very few patients need to be put on a ventilator; they'd probably be more accurate if they said that travelling by car was likely to result in a trip to intensive care.
