Daniel Horowitz at Conservative Review writes:
The CDC just came out with a report that should be earth-shattering to the narrative of the political class, yet it will go into the thick pile of vital data and information about the virus that is not getting out to the public. For the first time, the CDC has attempted to offer a real estimate of the overall death rate for COVID-19, and under its most likely scenario, the number is 0.26%.When this disease first broke, and we didn't know what we were dealing with, when we saw people in Italy and elsewhere dying in droves, and there was a legitimate fear that our medical facilities and resources were going to be overwhelmed, it made sense to close down schools and businesses.
Officials estimate a 0.4% fatality rate among those who are symptomatic and project a 35% rate of asymptomatic cases among those infected, which drops the overall infection fatality rate (IFR) to just 0.26% — almost exactly where Stanford researchers pegged it a month ago.
More importantly ... the overall death rate is meaningless because the numbers are so lopsided. Given that at least half of the deaths were in nursing homes, a back-of-the-envelope estimate would show that the infection fatality rate for non-nursing home residents would only be 0.1% or 1 in 1,000. And that includes people of all ages and all health statuses outside of nursing homes. Since nearly all of the deaths are those with comorbidities.
The CDC estimates the death rate from COVID-19 for those under 50 is 1 in 5,000 for those with symptoms, which would be 1 in 6,725 overall, but again, almost all those who die have specific comorbidities or underlying conditions. Those without them are more likely to die in a car accident. And schoolchildren, whose lives, mental health, and education we are destroying, are more likely to get struck by lightning.
But then we discovered that a vast majority of the deaths were among nursing home patients and folks with comorbidities. At that point, the sensible thing to do would've been to insure the protection of elderly patients, tell those with comorbidities to stay home and allow everyone who wished to return to work to do so.
The rationale for the shutdown was, after all, to "flatten the curve" and to insure that hospitals were not swamped. Well, the first has been accomplished and the second never happened, but governors in New York, Pennsylvania, Michigan and California, among others, are unmoved. They've kept their states shut down at enormous cost in human suffering, putting 36 million people out of work and causing the shuttering of over 100,000 businesses which will never reopen.
This histogram shows daily deaths from covid-19 in Pennsylvania. Despite the death rate having dropped to the same level as the very earliest days of the plague, the governor still has not permitted a complete restart of the economy in any part of the state.
The effect of all this on the mental health of those most affected by the economic shutdown is reflected in increase domestic abuse and skyrocketing suicide rates in some states.
Covid-19 has been a massive tragedy, but much of the tragedy has been brought on by our response to it. President Trump has declared that if there's a second wave of the contagion in the Fall there'll be no second national shutdown. That's a relief to hear.