First, don’t look at cases. Cases means number tested, not numbers who have the virus. Cases means nothing unless they are randomized. And in randomized studies of antibodies in small populations, there are far more cases than anyone admits to. At the low end its 10 times more cases. And at the high end its 100 times more cases. Like the study in one California county by Stanford found 40 to 85 times more cases than reported.
So you should be looking at deaths per million population in first world countries. Europe is especially analogous to the US. Asian countries like South Korea Taiwan and Japan are Islands. They are also homogeneous. So they can control their population more. Europe has lots of ports of entry.
In Europe the deaths are somewhere between 600 at the high end to 60 at the low end for large countries that can be trusted to give reliable numbers. Reliable numbers are numbers that count deaths. But that does not mean they are all the same. There are deaths with comorbidities. And there are deaths in the presence of the virus. And their are deaths which have not been tested but circumstances or symptoms lead healthcare workers to assume the virus was most likely present even if there was no test to verify.
Hiding old people and people at risk while doing nothing else, you could look at Sweden and get 192 deaths per million. Germany did some more. Hide the old people and do small lock downs. They are at 63 deaths per million. Italy and Spain locked down after the virus was fully taken hold. They are around 450 deaths per million. The US is around 144 deaths per million. We are on the low side. Only Germany has fewer.
But you need to look at the states. In New York state the deaths per million are over a thousand. Next door in Jersey they are 570 per million. Between them they have more than 50% of all the cases in the US. And these two states did not record cases earlier than other states. So how is New York state fatality rate 2 to 10 times more than most other states and most other countries. There are two likely scenarios. New York is counting more deaths by counting deaths in the most liberal manner possible. And that is true. And their subway system and density may have spread the virus far more completely than the rest of the world. This can only be true if you believe New York was especially bad and late when it comes to shutting down. And that is demonstrably true as well.
New York did encourage people to go out and “enjoy the restaurants, and use the subways” right up to mid-March when virtually everyone else was closing down. And the counting of virus fatalities could be explained as attention grabbing, to get more support from the federal government and to make Trump look bad. Both encourage liberal fatality counting.
The virus is the same everywhere. So the strategy that seems to work the best is hiding the vulnerable and lightly locking down the worst behavior like large crowds and unprotected mass transit. Severe lock downs just get smacked by second waves, like in China, Singapore and Japan. And doing nothing can overwhelm the health system, like in Italy and Spain. Hiding the vulnerable and lightly locking down, saves the health system and quickly establishes herd immunity without destroying the economy.
We should open up. We will get a light second wave. But we can easily handle it now. The vulnerable should continue to hide as much as they can.
I agree with your last statement.
It can now be seen that specific demos in the population, i.e. age and other underlying conditions, are vulnerable to infection and death.
Allowing the rest of us to work while isolating the vulnerable and quarantining the sick is the way forward.