CORONAVIRUS: Wait - *HOW* Deadly?

Here's the Big Question: Does social-distancing actually save lives?

My friend, Ed left this comment on my previous blogpost:

"I forgot to mention, probably a month ago I saw a very excellent youtube video about highly mutating RNA viruses which the Covid-19 virus is. He said that it is quite common for their mutations to essentially burn themselves out so they aren't as lethal or even noticeable in terms of visible symptoms. All this is to say that it wouldn't surprise me if it isn't as lethal now as it was in China or even Italy."

That's a fascinating possibility - that COVID19 could become less deadly as it mutates! Let's hope that is the case.

But Ed said something else that is worth exploring...

I know that we tend to think that Italy was hit particularly hard by the coronavirus, because that’s what the news reports told us.  And it’s true that it appears that Italy’s health care system was indeed overwhelmed.  But let’s look at the actual numbers.

Italy has 60,000,000 people.  They report 28,884 deaths from COVID19.  If we divide 28,884 by 60,000,000, we get .00048, or a mortality rate of 0.048%. 

By comparison, Sweden has 10,330,000 people.  They report 2,679 deaths, which gives us .00026, and makes their mortality rate 0.026%.

Sooooo… 0.048% for Italy, and 0.026% for Sweden?

Sweden’s death rate is *half* that of Italy’s?   How can this be??  Sweden implemented very few social-distancing rules while Italy went on virtual lockdown!  It’s a puzzle, no?  We then have to ask: how big a difference does social-distancing make?

Funny you should ask!  The U.S. has 330,000,000 people, and we’re reporting 67,155 deaths.  That gives us .0002, or a mortality rate of 0.02% - slightly less than Sweden’s 0.026%, and way less than Italy’s.

But playing with numbers is tricky.  First of all, the numbers are not set in stone - they're constantly changing.  Plus, numbers that seem small might not be!  Just suppose that the U.S. didn’t implement any of the various “lockdown” or “Safer At Home” rules.  We’d probably have the same death rate as Sweden, no?  And 0.026% of our 330,000,000 people would be 86,000 deaths.  So we’d have about 20,000 more in this country than we have right now. 

It will be interesting to see if Sweden’s death rate hits a plateau while ours continues to increase, which is what I suspect will happen as they reach the so-called “herd immunity” before we do.

So yeah, Italy was hit hard by the coronavirus - sort of.  But their 0.048% mortality rate is in fact lower than that of New York City which is at 0.16%.  If you break out the numbers for New York City from those its parent state, New York State’s mortality rate is 0.05% - about the same as Italy’s.  And, we must mention, about twice that of Sweden.

Hey, let's do Florida!  My home state has 21,500,000 people, and we are reporting 1,364 deaths.  That give us a mortality rate of 0.006%. Only the state of California is lower, at 0.005%.

Interestingly, Iowa, with 3.155 million people is at 0.01%. 

The City of Los Angeles, CA, has 4 million people and is at 0.03%

But...but...but how many people who get the disease die from it?  Well, that we cannot say for sure, because we simply do not know how many asymptomatic people are walking around with COVID19.  Likewise, we cannot accurately say what percentage of the population has the virus, or will eventually get the virus.  We can guess, but the range is huge and varies by demographic area - there is no one "blanket" number you can apply to the entire country.  

All I can do is look at the number of deaths versus the population.  Divide one by the other and you get a third number that you can convert to a decimal. At this point, that's the only way you can compare apples to apples.  Every other number is a guesstimate.