[whomario]

Originally Posted by sterlingice

I'm having a tough time quantifying it. I went to the CDC mortality page, which has data from 2017:FastStats - Deaths and Mortality

If we want to quantify it by average deaths per day, that year an average of 7708 people died every day during the year. Here's all the causes with more than 100 deaths per day:

Heart Disease: 1774
Cancer: 1641
Accidents: 465
Respiratory disease: 439
Stroke: 401
Alzheimers: 332
Diabetes: 229
Flu: 152
Kidney disease: 139
Suicide: 129
Liver disease: 114
Sepsis: 112 (wth? 40K people a year die of sepsis?!?)

So, yeah, we're already past everything but heart disease and cancer and we'll pass those this week, most likely. That's with all these heavy measures being taken.

We think about, say, if we keep the numbers to "only" 200K people, that's a win. It will still be the 3rd highest killer of people this year in the US. If we have some less good outcomes and hit 700K, it's the #1 killer in the US this year.

SI

And then there are numbers like the following as a worst case (and even that includes social distancing and a lockdown from March 8th !), happening in a country perhaps more succeptible but still a decently well-off Region with a decent healthcare system:



Even allowing a great amount of uncertainty on numbers and sample size, this is insane.

And like i said before, the 'victim profile' of the flu is similar and it's a general truism that older people with more health issues are more likely to die.

Another graphic, for which i wished i had the skills to extend the scale (by now NY is getting 3k+ a week. In confirmed deaths, i am not sure if New York really tracks Influenza in real time but suspect these are estimates based on excess mortality)

https://i.redd.it/oc5exnk2dep41.jpg