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by josephcsible·5y ago·view on hn ↗
> Covid has a much higher mortality rate.

Only if you're high-risk. If you're not, its mortality rate is much lower than the flu. The problem that most people have with the lockdowns is that we know who's high-risk and who's not, but we lock everyone down anyway.

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Do you have the numbers for the "not high risk" category? Also, what about the high risk people? Do we just throw them under the bus? Also, what about spreading a new virus to billions of hosts and praying for no mutations?
> Do you have the numbers for the "not high risk" category?

If I'm looking at https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/coronavirus-age-se... right, out of 15,230 coronavirus deaths in New York, 14,540 of them were people over 65 or confirmed to have underlying conditions, and only 92 of them were people under 65 and confirmed not to have underlying conditions. About 15% of their population is over 65. I'm not sure what the population base rate is for underlying conditions, though.

> Also, what about the high risk people? Do we just throw them under the bus?

No. We quarantine just them to keep them safe, and give them all free grocery delivery, etc. too.

> Also, what about spreading a new virus to billions of hosts and praying for no mutations?

I agree that's bad. I'm just saying that a lockdown that looks like it's going to last over a year is worse.

I want the numbers for the flu. You claimed that the flu is worse for non high risk individuals.
Below are data for the flu in the US for 2017-18 vs. the Corona virus in 2020.

Out of 120.000 deaths in both data sets, in the age group 0-4 years there were 115 deaths to flu vs. 9 to Corona for the age group 0-17.

Flu 2017-18 https://www.cdc.gov/flu/about/burden/2017-2018.htm

Corona 2020 (up to May) https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/coronavirus-age-se...

A few comments:

1. Based on your flu data, those deaths are for 11 million symptomatic flu cases, vs maybe 1 million Covid-19 cases in May. And that doesn't include asymptomatic flu cases (less often but still happen).

2. The numbers you're showing for Covid-19 deaths are just for NY. The flu ones were at US level.

We'll have to wait and see but I don't see why the flu would be deadlier than Covid-19, for any age group.

Let alone the fact that those numbers are for 1 year for flu and only 5 months for Covid.
Not to mention the unknown long-term effects of having it, even asymptotically.
Fear or concern for the unknown can be a good thing, there just isn’t any studies saying conclusively that a large number of people are seriously affected.

What are the long-term effects of not being able to have a normal life due to restrictions ?