As per normal, absolute numbers can be misleading to very smart humans when we have trouble intuiting about vast numbers like "100 million". If the goal is to convey scale accurately, its generally recommended to default report population related measures as per capita percentages. That doesn't mean other measures can't be relevant, but the choice really should be very carefully weighed in order to convey accuracy, not to increase shock value.
The fear is that this number (0.026%) will seem too low, which is why we're trying to use numbers like 100,000 in order to convince people to continue acting safely. The real message is: this number is so low BECAUSE we've all been working hard to keep it this low. That's a hard message because its nuanced, but its not misleading. I don't know if its as persuasive, its probably not, but that doesn't make "100,000" not misleading when used for shock.
0.026% is a number that means "most people don't know anyone well who died of covid19", and "many people aren't even directly acquainted with anyone that died of covid19". That's because the social distancing is working.
If it weren't working, based on covid19 survival stats, the human feeling would be "most people are directly acquainted with one or two people that died of covid19". That's a very different feeling. TBH, its still not exactly "black death in the middle ages" type of feeling, but the direct human impact would be MUCH larger.
WITH social distancing, at the present death rate, Covid19 in the US is killing about 1/4 the number of people daily of Cancer+Heart Disease.
WITHOUT social distancing (i.e. run amuk), based on "when hospitals were overwhelmed in some italian cities" survival rate, it looks like it'd be daily killing about 2x Cancer+HeartDiesase.
So social distancing is having big impact, and a really good job everyone, we are gaining a LOT of saved lives for our sacrifices.
All that said, I do wonder if 2x the daily deaths of Cancer+HeartDisease tips into "unthinkable to even openly discuss the tradeoff between quality of life and safety" territory? At what death rate do we consider completely changing the world as we know it? 0.00001%? 0.00001%? 0.001%? 0.01%? 0.1%? 1%?
And at what death rate do we surpress discussion of NOT making the tradeoff as too dangerous (risking thoughtless noncompliance)? 0.001% 0.01%? 0.1%? 1%? 10%?
Lets say you were one of the leaders of a small fishing village without mass media (i.e. without big numbers), and somebody convinced you that you had a choice:
1) Everyone stays in their huts for 6 mos to a year with all the impacts and suffering that entails
OR
2) An extra person will die this year (beyond the usual 3 who die every year). It could be anyone, but you're told its most likely to be somebody who would die in the next 5 years.
Does that seem like a no brainer? It doesn't feel like one to me. That would be a hard decision to me. I think I'd go for sitting in the huts, but if somebody wanted to discuss the decision with me.... I think that would be pretty reasonable. If the whole village wanted to get together and really talk it out and vote rather than just letting the leader(s) make the call, I think that'd make a lot of sense.
Personally? I think I'd vote "everyone stays in their huts" but I would absolutely NOT vote "can't be openly discussed because the discussion is too dangerous".
Should we become more risk averse as population grows because the numbers of deaths become so staggering? Or is percentage deaths a more relevant measure?
If you have 10000 people in your medieval media sphere, and ONE PERSON DIES EACH YEAR from an ox cart accident, we probably don't stop using ox carts. What if there's ten billion people in your media circle and therefore A MILLION OX CART DEATHS PER YEAR, should we therefore abandon ox carts?
I don't feel 100% on the answer, maybe the answer is something like.... we should spend the same percentage of resources avoiding unnecessary ox cart deaths as we would at the small scale? That would be a lot of money toward better ox carts, but we wouldn't shut down the world because OMG ONE MILLION either.
The rate seems small because you're apply it across the whole population. So, your number 2 choice is not quite accurate. The question is are people ok with many of their parents and grand parents dying this year?
> 0.026% is a number that means "most people don't know anyone well who died of covid19"
My wife's grandmother had COVID-19. At 80 years old, she was a lucky one and was asymptomatic. She's in a nursing home and many people around her did die though. I have 3 other friends who lost relatives to COVID-19. Even at the low population rate, it's rather stunning anecdotally.
It wouldn't change the number you know, it would just change who it is. Its more like 'you're pretty unlikely to know a youngish person who dies of covid19' (of course, we have large anecdata sample sizes on the internets.... therefore its very likely that many people on here know somebody youngish who died from covid19 complications, but still a small percentage).
"I know a few people who know somebody who died" sounds consistent with what you might expect from 0.026% if everyone communicates with about a hundred people... crudely (and wrong, but order of magnitude): 0.00026 * 100 * 100 = 2.6 = "a few".
I phrased it pretty carefully, but I agree it didn't immediately clarify that mostly the victims will look pretty old.... just bebcause "people who are likely to die within several years" is going to be dominated by people over 70. FWIW a few different measures of "likely to die within 5 years" looks like one of the simplest single-index predictors of covid19 survival, much better than just age. If you're 40 and likely to die before 45 due to a serious health condition, Covid will be roughly as dangerous to you as if you're 82.
> An extra person will die this year (beyond the usual 3 who die every year). It could be anyone, but you're told its most likely to be somebody who would die in the next 5 years.
The death rate is not an equally weighted distribution over the whole population. In fact, it's very weighted towards middle age and up, with younger people dragging it down. So in your example it's likely to be more than an extra person in the typical age of older parents and grandparents.
If the young had political power, the response would be a lot different, but because the wealth/power lie with the elderly, the current response is predictable. Fascinating times
Not to go off on a tangent, but that article looks at deaths per capita and then ignores the R0. The reason the COVID deaths per capita are as low as they are (and still bad) is because of lockdowns. Pointing to what happened with lockdown mitigations in place to claim that a lockdown isn't needed is misleading at best.
The article also uses 60k flu deaths as the average baseline which is incorrect. The 60k number was a particularly bad flu season. Last season flu deaths were ~34k [1]. This season could be much lower because of the lockdowns.
Comparing COVID to the flu is hard, and really should have never been done. Without taking into account the respective IFRs, CFRs, R0, etc... any comparison is going to be severely lacking. It's also hard to get accurate numbers while in the middle of the pandemic. I hope as things open up that COVID just becomes a memory. Unfortunately, that doesn't look like the case so far.
[1] https://www.cdc.gov/flu/about/burden/2018-2019.html I'm not really sure how the author got to a 60k average unless 2007-2009 was really bad. The years on the CDC site only have 1 season greater than 60k. Errors like this do bring all of the statistics into question.
I have no idea, but I wouldn't be surprised to see those portions of Europe "back in the hut" again in December. That said, it does seem like if you're on the lookout, have very low case numbers, and are doing strong contact tracing, "sitting in the hut" is unnecessary except to regain control if you have a surge.
I said we're back to normal, but I wasn't 100% fair: our borders are still semi-closed. We'll probably have another surge if we restore travel in the future from countries where Covid is active.
All in all I think it was a very small price we paid to be back on the tracks in only two months. Some companies are getting out of Kurzarbeit already (government help).
