Coronavirus Research in Wuhan

[Syne]

Yes, Keep Calm and Carry On is how they keep the sheep herded.

US deaths per million was only 253 more than UK. And that's likely with many more Americans with preexisting risk factors.
Land area doesn't matter since the US has many densely populated metropolitan areas. Average population density is very misleading.

[Yazata]

According to Johns Hopkins University's Coronavirus Resource Center, as of 3/10/23 when the pandemic was largely spent and the resource center shut down...

The United States had suffered 103,802,702 "confirmed cases" of which 1,123,806 had died. If we take these figures at face value, that is a 1.1% fatality rate or 341.11 deaths per 100k population.

By comparison, the United Kingdom had suffered 24,658,704 "confirmed cases" of which 220,721 had died. That's a 0.9% fatality rate or 325.13 deaths per 100k population. That's not a huge difference.

It's interesting to compare that to Sweden which didn't order the authoritarian lockdowns.

Sweden suffered 2,699,339 "confirmed cases" or which 23,777 died. That's a 0.9% fatality rate or 235.43 deaths per 100k population, significantly better than either the US or UK.

Source:

https://coronavirus.jhu.edu/data/mortality

One problem with these numbers is that "confirmed cases" probably dramatically undercounts actual infections, since many people would test positive on covid tests without ever having displayed any symptoms. If large numbers of infected but asymptomatic individuals existed alonside the acknowledged "cases", then the percentage of infected people who die will be much lower than the published ~1%.

There might also be overcount issues with the fatality numbers. Most covid fatalities in the US were among high risk groups such as the frail elderly and individuals with other potentially fatal comorbidities that might have killed them anyway. So what killed many of these people wasn't so much covid as it was covid combined with a whole variety of other serious health problems.

And most hospitals would test everyone they admitted for covid. If somebody tested positive, many hospitals would report them as a confirmed case, even if the individual was admitted for something unrelated like injuries sustained in an auto accident. If the individual died of those injuries, it was another covid case that had died.

[Syne]

That's true. I had Covid, with mild flu symptoms, and never reported it to anyone. There was no reason for many healthy people to go running to the doctor/hospital.

[confused2]

I think it would be fair to guess everyone has been exposed to the virus. With 80% vaccinated with a 90% reduction in death rate one would expect around 2/3 of deaths to be among the unvaccinated. The death rate would be much higher if most of the unvaxxed are old with a much higher death rate from the virus.

To a large extent the death rate is going to be determined by the vaccination rate among the elderly, the general health of the population (obesity and smoking!) and (possibly) to a lesser extent the quality of treatment available.

Once the population is mostly vaxxed the only useful intervention is to reduce the infection rate to enable heath services to function effectively.

Syne has avoided giving information about the ability of the US healthcare system to cope with the rate of infection - so I don't know whether the interventions in the US (masks, distancing and lock-downs) were in any way justified - he suggests not but doesn't support that claim - maybe he doesn't know (or care).