Originally posted by gaweidert Well extensive testing is rolling out in New York state. It appears that some 15% or the total people tested have tested positive for COVID-19 antibodies. In New York City the current number is 24.7% or 2,100,000 people who have gotten the virus and survived it. This greatly lowers the mortality rates. Since testing is only just rolling out outside of NYC it will be interesting to see how the final numbers will turn out state wide. Here is a link to the article if anyone is interested. In about two weeks the governor plans to start reopening NY state. Government cannot function without a constant influx of revenue and New York was already running 6 billion dollar deficit before all this started.
1 in 4 in NYC May Have Been Infected, New Study Finds; Some Parts of State to ‘UNPause’ May 15 – NBC New York There are major problems with this "study." It took 3000 people at big box stores and grocery stores around the state. In a state with several million people, that's a pretty small sample. In addition, the people who are out shopping are significantly more likely to have been exposed than those who are aggressively social distancing and are "hunkered down." It feels like a study designed to overestimate the prevalence of antibodies.
That said, based on those numbers the mortality rate is around 0.8 %. That means that if the same number of people got COVID as normally get influenza in a given season in the United States (50 million), you would have 400,000 deaths. And has been mentioned before, the odds are good that it would be significantly more than that without at least some social distancing and measures put in place to prevent the spread of the virus.
Be that as it may, the important thing to me is that states monitor new cases closely and back track if they start rise. The issue to me really isn't the (foolish) individuals who think this is no big deal and get the virus. It is the health care workers who they end up infecting as the nurses and aides do their best to care for them.