If we'd have never even started testing for the virus, some people would have gotten sick, a few people would have died, it would have come and gone like the flu, and we wouldn't have millions out of work and on welfare.

Is the govt ever going to financially recover from all that stimulus money that it p--sed in the wind? At 20 yo i wonder how many years of my life i'll have to work to pay it off.

I would practice abstinence. As much as possible.

You'll never pay it off. It will continue to grow every year. And don't have kids.....they don't deserve what's coming in the next years.

What if you put a mask over it?

The population they were testing initially skewed the results then, and the population they are testing now skews these results. Along with the amount of tests available both then and now altering any conclusions accuracy.

The way testing has progressed is a statistical mess, fraught with inaccuracy and loaded with assumptions.

And in case you were wondering why Texas ICU's are filling up;. It is because they are starting to see "patients as usual" again. Only 15% of the "overwhelmed" hospital's patients are Covid related. The vast majority are surgical/emergency patients.

I find it very strange that the Covid-19 pathogen is stopped by the red river between TX and OK, and by the boundaries between GA, AL and FL.
Weird how two big conservative states (FL and TX) are now in Covid's cross hairs. This virus is smarter than we give it credit.
In an election year, it seeks out certain places at certain times.
Mask or no mask.

Like showering with your socks on...

Yes...it is a smart virus. It only infects people that attend Trump rallies but not protesters in the big cities.

I've never had either of those, so they must be fake.

It is not difficult to find the death rate for all nations and the USA if one is interested in doing so. Currently the US death rate is 4.32% of those confirmed infected die. Six weeks ago the percentage was 5.8% so yes we are gong down as we test more people and the average age of the persons testing positive goes down. This compares with a few countries like Brazil which has a 3.99%, Germany 4.4%Mexico at 11.9% and Great Britain at 15.5%.
The median age in the USA is 38, Germany is 45, while Brazil and Mexico are much lower in their 20s. The best thing going for the large populated countries like Brazil, Indonesia, India, etc.and most of Africa is they are very young which offsets poverty and poorer health care services.
Most experts feel that to have successful herd immunity we need 50-70% of the population exposed or positive. That range is based on the morbidity or infection rate of the disease. I don't know where COVID fits on that line.
If we are switching to the herd immunity approach it will take a long time to infect another 150-200 million people

Bryce

Median age is irrelevant, average age is the number we should watch.

Median shows that half the population is that number or below or half higher. The average is just adding up all the totals and dividing by the number of people. They many times can be very close but can be skewed considerably.
Based on the fact that we see median ages of 19 to 48 from nation to nation to me gives a good idea of the age and also it shows the age differences quite well. Your thoughts are probably more accurate when dealing with populations of humans as there are not numbers below zero and very few over 100 and a lot of people, billions of people.

Bryce

Bryce, Two weeks ago the CDC estimated that 20 million Americans have had the disease. On that day there were 124,000 total deaths attributed to Covid-19. 20,000,000/124,000 , you can do the math. In May our biggest hospital chain in Pennsylvania (UPMC) reported that the average age of death from Covid 19 was 84 years of age. The average age of death for all residents of the commonwealth is 78. More numbers for you to ponder.

The post was not to try and defend any side of this issue. To me the info would help to see which nations with much younger populations that have poor health care and sanitation may not have nearly as high of a percentage of severe cases or deaths. Also the 20 million is an estimate. the data I used was based on confirmed cases.

Bryce

it's correct but misleading, the common cold is caused by over 200 different viruses, making it an nonsensical comparison to Covid. Though, the point is taken, that it's a virus-family we haven't cured.

US death rate as a percentage of cases is meaningless unless you know the number of cases, which they don't. If they were only testing symptomatic and Frontline workers, then you know nothing about the relation to the population as a whole. Being as apparently over half the cases show no symptoms , then you really don't know the total potential cases. People showing symptoms test positive at a relatively low rate. Mathematical models might show possibilities of case numbers but there are far too many variables to draw accurate conclusions.

Same with the other countries percentages and death rates. Unless the other countries are following the same testing protocals, comparison cannot be made accurately.

You can figure out roughly the amount of people infected and previously infected by the infection rate. If 10% of your test subjects are infected then you can roughly extrapolate to 10% of the untested people are infected. Not exact, a rough approximation.

The death rate compared to confirmed cases is pretty meaningless. IMHO

If a 1 year old died and a 100 people a 100 years old died the median age is 50, average age would be 99. Posting median age makes it look worse than it is. Liberal States do the same thing.