[ExI] More deaths from COVID-19 than Afghanistan and Iraq wars combined

[John Clark]

On Thu, Apr 16, 2020 at 11:38 AM Dylan Distasio via extropy-chat <
extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:

*> This is not the Spanish flu. *
>

That's true it's not the Spanish flu, it's not even a variation of the
Spanish flu, it's not the flu at all, it's something completely new under
the sun; so optimistic predictions about this unknown quantity and the
point at which the death rate will stop growing don't fill me with a lot of
confidence. I hope the optimists are right, but I don't want to bet my like
on it.


> * > The CFR for COVID-19 is MUCH lower. *
>

That's just a guess because nobody knows what the true fatality rate of the
1918 flu was or what this 2020 virus is either because nobody knows how
many people had mild cases that were never reported; in 1918 you had to be
pretty damn sick before you were even diagnosed with having the disease
which would drive the CFR up.  And even if the CFR for COVID-19 is MUCH
lower that doesn't necessarily mean the number of dead bodies would be much
lower too, it wouldn't be if COVID-19 is MUCH more infectious than the flu
and we know so little about it that remains a possibility.

 John K Clark
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