Coronavirus Information...who do you trust?

[Dill]

(07-14-2020, 03:01 PM)BengalHawk62 Wrote: And the inevitable response from the conservative friend.......

.......that’s fine and dandy....but it doesn’t change one damn thing about the percentage of the population in this state who have died from Covid 19. If I stand naked grabbing a barbed wire fence during an electrical storm my chances of getting hit by lightning go up dramatically. But...I don’t do that. So talking about the survival rate after the fact doesn’t begin to speak about the infinitesimal chance of dying of Covid 19 in the state of Iowa. The very obvious bottom line is 755 people out of a population of 3,123,899- 3,155,070 (depending the source used for Iowa’s population) leaving the entire population with a .024 chance of dying from Covid 19. I choose to not hype the information.

For me, the problem is not just with "dying," as in me dying. It's not ok if loved ones die either. 

Further, it appears that many people who live are suffering serious, even permanent, damage to lungs and other organs. Is that number less or greater than the number who die?

Also, there is the economic damage done to families with sick members. Wage earners who cannot work.

We don't appear to have much statistical data on this sort of collateral damage. But clearly death stats should not be the single measure of damage.


Finally, the "chances of dying" in Iowa is not some permanently fixed ratio of living to dead. As long as people practice social distancing and there are few cases, it may remain low. If they do not, there is no reason to suppose it will remain low.  If 3 million contract the disease, the chance of dying will no longer be only .024. The death rate won't be a "mere" 755 but reach hundreds of thousands.