Again - you are pedantically missing the point. Yes, there are other issues here which make the situation worse. yes, the graph may not be perfectly accurate.
It is a meme. It uses parody to make a larger point. It can’t boil the ocean and reveal every facet, factor, subtlety and nuance of the situtation. It is not a journalistic endeavor. It is not a documentary, white paper, or scholarly treatise. It’s just a meme. And the overall point stands.
So at a dinner party of 5 couples who are way older than us and NOT wearing masks I should show up wearing one???
Oh, please. This is beyond ridiculous. I would absolutely wear a mask if they were. But they choose not to… so do I
You pick on me while you live in an apartment. No responsibilities for yard work, no concerns about how to pay for repairs. Your cushie life is secure by your government. You can turtle up with no consequences on how to pay your rent or utilities.
So your plan is to spend the rest of your life wearing a mask in public and never attending another wedding, funeral, graduation, birthday, 50-anniversary-celebration for the rest of your life???
What about COVID-20? COVID-21? Endless possibilities on mutations. Never goes away.
If that is what it takes to keep from infecting and possibly saving someone then your damn right I will. It isn’t hard and cost me nothing. What does it cost you?
I don’t go out in public if I am sick with the flu either as I am responsible enough to care about others. This virus is on a pace to be way worse worldwide that the flu and you can transport it to others before you even know you are infected. (unlike the flu that lets you know when you have it). I have absolutely no problem sacrificing a little personal convenience for the health potential to help the human race. Even if it were to help you. And you can try spinning worst case scenario’s all you want to try justifying your point but it still doesn’t condone a selfish attitude.
It is interesting to see how a world crisis brings out the true character in people!
The rest of the community. By wearing a mask, by staying inhere except for required trips outside for food, exercise (by ourselves, nowhere near anyone, etc.). I understand that’s something you either can’t or refuse to grasp, but there it is. Some people, including a lot around my area, have a weird ability to think about the welfare of others.
Yes, it’s an indestructible apartment where nothing ever goes wrong or needs repair. An amazing apartment, indeed.
Ummm, sure. Never mind that you have exacly NO idea where I am, what my situation is, and so on. Once again, you’re just completely making stuff up to suit yourself, as you’ve done constantly. Your grasp on reality is about as strong as your compassion for anyone who isn’t yourself or your husband (which, to be fair, seems to be VERY common in the US - it’s all about MY RIGHTS, and screw everyone else).
Yes, or just don’t go to utterly non essential events. This is not difficult stuff for people who don’t ONLY think about themselves and what it is they like to do, irrespective of the circumstances. “I’m socializing with idiots so I’ll be one too” is a fairly flimsy defence.
You think the Spanish have trained their pangolins and bats to use the flushing lavatories?
Hey - Spanish Flu II - it has a ring to it. 
True - this is definitely a factor. Even while the raw percentage of total people remains low, the number of people with substantial vulnerability and who have not yet been exposed to the virus remains comparatively high in most U.S. states.
In May, it was really only New York state that was somewhat of an exception. Now, New Jersey has joined it, and to lesser extents - Massachusetts and Connecticut. This is not to say that there are no really vulnerable people left in these states - there certainly are, but we’re more aware of the age factor and other conditions like obesity, diabetes, etc., that make people vulnerable.
In the states where the number of cases is substantially increasing, deaths can be expected to rise in the future, though probably not proportionally, due to the increased cases being more prominently among younger, less vulnerable people.
Another mitigating factor may be changes in the virus. The most common occurrence is mutation into less-lethal forms, rather than more-lethal, and thus far that seems to be happening with Covid-19.
There’s a representation of different virus strains in North America.
Good website - you can see analyses for the whole world or regions of it, and see the changes over time as the virus has spread.
“medical legal drug dealers”? What does that have to do with the meme? Or anything in this conversation?
Why do you keep inserting non sequiters into the conversation?
I would paraphrase your last statement to: “Two irrational responses don’t make a lucid argument.”
I do not think strains and mutations are the same thing
Just adding: I think doctors and hospitals may have become better at saving lives with the accumulated experience over time.
Adding further: There was also that recent study published comparing US deaths last year and this year which found that for March, April and May (I think) there were many excess deaths not attributed to covid. So we may have to wait quite a bit to figure out what the real picture is.
Well, what can I say? Mutations cause different strains.
There’s a lot of people working on the genes in the virus, and a lot of changes have been seen already.
Look at all those branches. I agree that we’re getting better at treating the disease over time, but that doesn’t rule out beneficial virus mutations.
The first SARS was more lethal - it killed around 10% of cases, but it wasn’t as contagious and people weren’t as contagious until they were really suffering with symptoms. The current virus isn’t as lethal, but is better at jumping from person to person, and people can be contagious before they have symptoms or even if they never develop symptoms.
Viruses like this mutate a lot - they’re hijacking cells and having the cells make an enormous number of copies of the virus; every new copy having a chance at mutations. Most mutations won’t make any difference to us. Here’s hoping that no more-lethal ones will show up.
True - there’s a gap between reported Covid-19 deaths and the number of expected deaths under normal conditions. Of the deaths in that gap, some are due to Covid-19 (i.e. there’s an overall undercounting of them) and some are not due to it.
I’ve read so much about the numbers and how to interpret them, and I have mixed feelings (even the WaPo - which is my current news of choice, though sometimes I’m not entirely sure why) is ringing the alarm bell in its choice of graph slices and adjectives, but their numbers show a US mortality rate of .044 from among KNOWN infection rates. In the same article they quote someone saying that the actual infection rate is probably 10x higher as if that’s a big problem, but that would drop the mortality rate to .004.
In any case, one thing that seems really clear to me: metabolic syndrome is at the heart of the vulnerability to the virus. This is my criteria for the validity of articles or doctors who talk about COVID policy: if they don’t even mention insulin resistance and how to address it, then I think it’s safe to assume they don’t actually care about lowering mortality.
Sugar levels resolve incredibly quickly in most people. In the time that it will take to create and test a vaccine, you can make significant improvement to metabolic health. Edited to add: even a few weeks of no processed food (or the junk that passes as “food” in hospitals and nursing homes) can make a huge difference in sugar levels.
Yes indeed - people should be thinking about this.
Yeah, the case fatality rate in the U.S. and worldwide hung around 5% for quite a while. In the last month, testing has increased enough to make it go down some.
I doubt the “ten times higher actual infection rate” - the current observed drastic increase in cases in many areas indicate a population with a much lower rate of exposure. Currently, cases/tests is about 8% for the U.S. as a whole. No way can it be anywhere near 80%.
Among the U.S. states where the virus outbreak started the earliest, and which have the most per-capita deaths (New York, New Jersey, Connecticut and Massachusetts), tests/cases averages 11% and is quite consistent. In the beginning, it was almost entirely people who were hospitalized who got tested, and later it was people with more severe symptoms, so the numbers would get skewed higher, versus the general population. Even with that, we’re only at 11% there.
A mortality rate of 0.4% - could be. If we don’t get an effective vaccine or antiviral drugs that really make a difference, it would certainly fit. That would be 1.3+ million Americans, or 10 times as many as at present. For now, I’m guessing a little lower than that. The tendencies of viruses to become less lethal, more experience with treatment in the medical community, and the fact that not everybody will be exposed would have me saying 2/3 of that.
This is key, and has been what a few doctors I follow on Twitter have been saying for several months. People aren’t dying because they’re old, as such, they’re dying because they have broken bodies and their blood is similarly broken. And why some younger people are stroking out from it and so on - same problem.
