[ExI] As of today more Americans have died from Covid-19 than in 911

[Darin Sunley]

The relevant stat is not deaths, but deaths-above-actuarial-baseline. A
stat, I note, that no one is even /slightly/ trying to calculate, and that
seems taboo to even mention in polite society.

On 9/11, the overwhelming majority, perhaps even all if those deaths, were
deaths-above-actuarial-baseline. Maybe a few of thise people would
statistically died from heart attacks and car accidents, but not many. IIRC
Eliezer Yudkowsky reported that 9/11 was worth 30 minutes of humanity's
baseline death rate.

It is not obvious that most COVID deaths are above the actuarial baseline
for their demographics.

Every death matters. But 3000 deaths sounds a lot scarier than 2950 deaths
from causes we feel comfortable with, plus 50 extra deaths from an unusual
circumstance. If a COVID death pre-empts and replaces a cancer, heart
disease, or car accident death that statistically would have occurred
during the same period, does it really have a public policy, let alone a
political implication?

On Mon, Mar 30, 2020, 2:57 PM John Clark via extropy-chat <
extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:

> Last Thursday on March 26 at 4:22 pm I wrote this:
>
> *"Exactly one week ago the US had 8,898 confirmed cases of COVID-19, today
> it has 81,476, the highest of any nation in the world. One week ago there
> were only 149 deaths from COVID-19, as of today there has been 1180 deaths.
> And there is not the slightest sign the death rate is slowing down. That
> doesn't sound like an overreaction to me. And unlike some, in my opinion I
> don't think it would  be beautiful to have packed churches on Easter."*
>
> Even though my words are only 4 days old they are hopelessly out of date.
> Today in America at 4:25 PM there are 159,689 people that have gotten sick
> and 154,469 are still sick. And 2,951 Americans have died from Covid-19. In
> 911 only 2605 Americans died.
>
> John K Clark
> _______________________________________________
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> extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org
> http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat
>
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