Again, the numbers are skewed.
What we don't know: How many have had the virus and only had mild or no symptoms at all.
Why? Because testing has generally been limited to people who are sick, as in sick enough to seek medical care.
Without that number, there can be no reasonable or accurate estimate of mortality, period.
We can identify risk groups from mortality data, in that virtually all (99%) of those who have died have had one or more medical conditions, notably Hypertension, coronary Disease, or Diabetes, and there may be other conditions not talked about like HIV/AIDS, antirejection drugs for transplanted organs, chemotherapy, etc.
While that is no guarantee that the absence of those factors precludes serous medical problems or death, it tends to eliminate those without those risk factors from serious risk of mortality.
We are not getting the whole picture, just a close up of mortality. While scary enough to keep eyes glued to the screen and sell papers, that just isn't good data. Political motivations are suspect as well, especially from a media that has demonstrated the most bias of any in my lifetime.
What we do know is that as jobs disappear from the measures taken to reduce panic, the health insurance for those same people will go the way of the dodo bird. Many of those businesses will not come back from a protracted shutdown. So, not only is there economic risk, the absence of insurance for many may mean they delay health care and actually increase mortality when they might have otherwise sought appropriate care at an earlier date because their insurance would have covered the lion's share of the expenses. People covered under a spouse's plan might not get that care, either.
All those put out of work will suffer economic hardship, even if they never meet someone with a COVID 19 infection, as will their dependents.
Government stepping in to pay people some sort of compensation for that will inevitably leave people falling through the cracks, increases the national debt (if someone can be found to purchase those instruments of debt--likely the Chinese won't), and only paves the road to a more socialistic model.
What has made this problem worse is the way it has been reported, with an emphasis on a relatively few dead. (I know I'll get gigged as "unfeeling" for that, but really, there are 7,800,000,000 people in the world, and just over 10,000 deaths). By those numbers so far, we'd expect a grand total of deaths from this virus in this state (ND) of 1 (Yes, one, that isn't a misprint or typo).
In the meantime, tens of thousands are out of work out of that same population.
Poll
