Posted on 03/21/2020 8:36:39 AM PDT by Hojczyk
The U.S. has the lowest per capita death rate of this group, tied with Austria, at 0.7 per million, up from 0.3 four days earlier.
Italy has the highest mortality rate by far, at 67 per million. It is too early to gauge the ultimate course of the epidemic, but in crude terms it looks as though Italy is heading for a death rate of something like 100 per million. It could easily go higher than that.
I don’t think the U.S. will experience a mortality rate anywhere near as high as Italy’s, for a number of reasons including our younger population, far fewer smokers, lower population density, a better health care system and early deployment of anti-viral drugs, some of which are likely to prove helpful.
But let’s assume the U.S. ultimately sees a mortality rate of 100 per million. That would be 143 times the current U.S. rate, not outside the realm of possibility. Do the math: if we have around 330 million people, and 100 die per million, that equals 33,000, which would be equivalent to the deaths from an average seasonal flu season. Maybe it’s worse than that; maybe by the time it runs its course, the death toll from COVID-19 rises to 200 per million, 286 times the current rate. That would still be less than the death toll from flu in the U.S. just two years ago.
Maybe the Wuhan virus will prove much worse than any of those crude assumptions suggest. It is too early to rule out that possibility. But policymakers need to consider the possibility that the damage done by the extreme measures being taken to slow the spread of the virus will ultimately prove to be greater than the harm done by the virus itself.
If you notice in the stats, the north European/Germanic countries have the best stats. The southern European/Latin countries have the worst.
I am sure Dem governors will be sending the health dept data to Ole Joe every evening at 6 so his staff can prep him. And since, right now, those states are where the action is I am sure he will have enough material to exacerbate the people’s fears.
Back to remedial Latin with you! ;)
Caput, nominative singular, one person. Capita, nominative plural, many persons.
Well I guess that’s one of those words, that have evolved by misuse, to replace the original.
An extreme example is the language of a security guard I know in Collierville, TN. She seems to have mastered the ability to shorten sentences, and still communicate. She does this in several ways, one being the removing of ‘s’ from about any plural word. Just listening to her talk is a curious adventure.
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