The fact is they are calling almost all deaths Covid. The current death number is over inflated. As someone that was just on the verge of death because of another issue, the one that they really succumbed to, is being written up as Covid.
I know a couple of young people, friends of my kids, that cannot pay their rent this month.
In California the death rate is currently at 5 out of every 100,000 people in the state. Does that really warrant all the financial suffering and anxiety?
The number is actually undercounting deaths, but that will all work out eventually.
If someone is on hospice care with a month to live, say due to cancer, then gets COVID and expires due to pneumonia they didn't have before, that's a COVID death. Just because they were going to die anyway doesn't invalidate the cause of death.
But the issue of "when to open up" is a thorny one. I live in Indiana, our (republican) governor is opening us up very gradually using a data based approach with inputs including the corona case loads and hospital capacities. Over the last two months we got very solid data about what our state can handle, and how our case load converts into hospitalizations and deaths, and what each incremental bunch of patients does to the hospital system. The opening plan (
Back On Track Indiana: Home ) gives weeks in between each stage so if things look like they might get out of control, it can snap back. While I am quite liberal, I think my conservative governor is doing a good job and listening to facts and acting based on them. Indiana has about 600 new cases (positive diagnoses) per day and somewhat more than 30 COVID -19 deaths each day, mostly stable for the last month or so. This means that if you are a diagnosed COVID-19 case, you have about a 6% chance of dying of the thing on average. It's non-trivial.
California COVID-19 Coronavirus update by county with statistics and graphs: total and new cases, deaths per day, current active cases, recoveries, historical data, trends, projections, and timeline.
www.worldometers.info
Check the graphs. Your state has about 1500 new cases each day and about 75 deaths, on average. So, if you get it about a 5% chance of dying from it on average.
In all states the deaths are most in the elderly and immunocompromised. But given the current restrictions, the fact that every day 1500 people in Cali are still getting this thing (plus, lots more that are subclinical) means there's a lot going around.
A few takeaways from my perspective:
We can't wait this thing out. Vaccines are too far in the future.
We haven't come up with compelling treatments as a silver bullet or game changer
Sooner or later, each state has to open to some extent
Every state has different dynamics so there's no one size fits all.
OFTEN OVERLOOKED: When the restrictions lighten up, folks that were collecting unemployment due to the imposed shutdown have to go back to work or lose benefits. If their place of work can't keep them on due to low demand, it means the cost of their unemployment shifts from the state to the business owner.
I don't envy those in charge that have to weigh the pros and cons of back to work.
My family and I are fortunately maintaining a relatively normal lifestyle throughout this event.
