In the US, nursing home deaths account for about 40% of the total deaths. The worldwide average is somewhere over 40% with the deaths in nursing homes in Canada reportedly closer to 80% of their total deaths. Nursing home residents are by far the most vulnerable to Covid-19. Nearly every expert agrees nursing home residents need to be handled more carefully.
Overall, Covid-19 is looking like less of a threat with a reported 80% of those testing positive showing few if any symptoms and 95% of those testing positive showing at most moderate flu-like symptoms. It seems to strike about 5% hardest and those are the ones who end up in hospitals or dying. Now 5% of 330 million Americans is a lot of people (around 16.5 million if my math is right) so it's still a big problem, but for the other 95% it's more of a nuisance.
And it's important to bear in mind that there are probably a lot more people who have had it without symptoms, or minimal symptoms, than is likely being reported which could change the math in a dramatic fashion. That 5% number of people hit hardest could drop to less than one percent pretty easily. Some international studies put the death rate at 0.1% which is comparable to a very bad flu season. In the US, 0.1% of 330 million people would be 330,000 people which seems to be about where we're heading if everyone gets exposed.
One of the numbers the CDC isn't releasing is the antibody test results. The daily updated test results are typically the PCR tests which look for active virus, but not a past infection. I suspect the antibody test results show a much higher rate of past infection and thus a lower rate of people with moderate to severe symptoms.
About a month to six weeks ago a preliminary antibody screening in LA and NYC showed as many as 20%-25% had already been exposed to the virus and developed antibodies. By now that number could be 30%-40% which if applied to our current number of dead and extrapolated would bring the potential death toll up to the 0.1% or 330,000 that's being reported internationally if everyone was infected. The good news is that means that 99.9% of us survive this just fine.
There are lots of numbers and studies out there these days. Sorting through them all can be challenging. Things don't look nearly as bad as the original projections of 2.2 million dead. Our upper tier number right now seems to be the 330,000 or one tenth of one percent of the population if everyone gets exposed and infected. Typically viruses like this don't infect everyone, so we're likely looking at an even lower number than that. I wouldn't be shocked to see deaths stop around the 120,000-150,000 mark. And bear in mind we lost over 80,000 Americans in the 2017-2018 flu season despite there being flu vaccine and effective flu treatments. We have neither a vaccine nor effective treatment for Covid-19. If we didn't have the flu vaccine or effective treatments in the 2017-2018 flu season, we'd likely have seen a similar death toll. This truly isn't the end of the world.
Fly!!! Eagles!!! Fly!!!
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