TAMU1990 said:

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So about 30% of the population has had the virus?

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26.5% - 5-17
35.4% - 18-49
25.3% - 50-64
16.6% - 65+

as of November 30

What is this data telling us?

well the death numbers could look much worse. still a lot of vulnerable people with no immunity whatsoever.

So I have a question for those of you who know more than I do about the process CDC uses to estimate total infections of this or in normal years flu. On a general level how is this estimate made and what level of confidence is actually behind it? I ask because looking at the increases since Nov 30 have me wondering about this. Confirmed cases have increase 57% since Nov. 30. If you give that same increase to the CDC estimate that puts us at ~143MM cases to date, or 87% of the way to herd immunity for an R0=2 or 65% for R0=3. I know that the calculated herd immunity is vastly oversimplified but it would seem to me that if the CDC estimate is correct, looking at where things are now and are heading, this thing should basically burn itself through the population in the first part of 2021 and be done regardless of vaccine roll out. This would seem like good news/bad news if it is true, just curious as to how much stock to give it. Not trying to start a debate about what the correct action steps are, i'm just genuinely curious on the science and analysis that goes into these kind of estimates and the implications it has for the US portion of this pandemic.

The virus just seems to be running it's course through the population.

Thankfully the death rate has gone way down over the last for five months compared to the first four or five months of the pandemic.

What is scary is that despite some mitigation efforts, 91 million people still may have been infected. It's not scary for this one, it's scary for the next one. Imagine if the next one has a death rate closer to MERS or kills younger people at similar rates to the old. That's some scary **** right there.

I agree in principle, but it's not just old people. The problem with America compared to a place like Sweden is that we are fat as hell.

Most of the people we have lingering in the hospital for an extended period of time are obese, have diabetes, or had uncontrolled high blood pressure. This is people in their early 30s all the way up to their mid-50s. Staying in the hospital for a month or more. While we figured out a way to keep them alive, we can't seem to get them off of high flow oxygen.

BlackGoldAg2011 said:

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agforlife97 said:

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Matsui said:

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What is this data telling us?

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It's clearly telling us that our response to the virus has been irrational. We've adopted authoritarian economy smashing public policy for no sound reason. It's obvious you can tailor your response to protect the elderly, and it was obvious since about April 10th that this was the case. It's an epically disastrous failure of our governments at all levels.

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or maybe its telling us that if 91MM got it in 9 months in spite of these efforts, maybe with no response it would have burned through the entire susceptible US population by the end of summer causing healthcare systems across the country to collapse with the burden of that many sick people hitting it all at once. it's hard to know for sure

the only way this is "clearly" saying anything is if your mind was already made up about the conclusion before you saw the data.

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Yeah, and your response is an example of someone who has their mind already closed. Because I did not say "no response" did I?