re: CDC 94% of Covid deaths in the US had underlying medical conditions!

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Interesting, at least to me, when we look at how we did and should handle the mitigation efforts is looking at these three countries.

All three of these countries are nearing the same level of deaths per million.

Spain-Went full lock down for almost three months after it was hit hard then went to a regional approach. Now, young people are getting it but deaths aren't rising (doesn't mean there aren't still people getting sick).

Sweden has remained mostly voluntary restrictions with people taking personal charge. The sickest and elderly got hit hard early with their strategy but deaths now rising slightly over time.

US was all over they place lol. Few precautions early then heavier precautions then whatever compromise we have currently arrived upon. We had the luxury of more notice than Spain.

quote:

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I averaged out the last three years to take away from some of the annual variation. Here is that for each year.

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Year Annual Change
2015 6.33%
2016 -0.33%
2017 3.52%
2018 1.88%
2019 -0.44%
2020 11.50%

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I agree with your general premise, however a graph with the y-intercept at 1.5 million is extraordinarily misleading in my opinion. Here's the reality, treating the above graph as true (which I do).

Roughly speaking, the chance that each of us die this year will be +11.5% above what it otherwise was. This is WAY less significant than most Americans will interpret it.

For instance, if I had a 1% chance of kicking in in 2020 in a world without COVID - it's now 1.115% in a world with COVID. Alternatively, my all-cause "survival rate" for 2020 dropped from 99% to 98.885%.

Since the risks of covid roughly go along with other risk factors already known to lead to death (especially, and including, being old) - this is probably a good way of looking at this that doesn't undermine that it IS deadly and will lead to deaths that otherwise would not have occured, but all out panic and societal disruption is not rational.

It's also probably true that some of our older folks may have went from a much higher, (say 30% chance that they would have died this year, to a 34.5% of dying). That's a huge pile of bodies when compiled Nationally but still not worth altering your decisions THAT greatly if you're in that group. It's perfectly reasonable if you're in that group to value your remaining time with family at the expense of an 11.5% increase in your chance of not making through the year alive.

That being said, it can be rational (and in my view, is rational) to put in place disease controlling restrictions should our medical system experience extreme strain, or we ask our medical professionals to take on undue risk (i.e. no PPE, as was the case in March).

Edited for math