“So, taking age and preexisting conditions into account, there is an extremely high number of people—at least 42%—whose freedom you would curtail so that those at lower risk could continue their lives of indulgence.”
THe single greatest factor in the death rate is age. Just look at the ages of those dying, or said to be dying from China Virus and you will see a full 80% are age 65 and up.
My point was there was NEVER a need to shut down the economy. We have all been played and it couldn’t be more obvious.
https://data.cdc.gov/NCHS/Provisional-COVID-19-Death-Counts-by-Sex-Age-and-S/9bhg-hcku
That chart you linked is just the number of deaths from various causes, but does not give the death rate—the proportion of people who die of the illness as a percentage of all who have had the illness.
Yes, a proportionately higher number of people over age 60 die from Covid-19 than people under that age. That does not change the fact that even at younger ages, the only age group in which Covid-19 is less likely to cause death than influenza is people age 19 and below. (This is actually skewed a little by the fact that influenza preferentially kills those less than 2 and over age 65. So Covid-19 is actually more dangerous to anyone age 20 and up than a simple comparison to the influenza death rate shows.)
The other issue that I have not focused on as much is the potential for long-term disability resulting from Covid-19.
Although there is limited data so far, there are historical records from the similar viruses SARS and MERS showing that some people never fully recovered from the effects. Covid-19 (I don’t use the term SARS-2, since I think it is confusing) affects multiple organs. It attacks the heart, kidneys, neurological system, testes, and blood systems in addition to the lungs. Once a virus attacks a cell, that cell no longer performs its physiological functions and is permanently lost; tissue damage results when a large number of cells have been destroyed in that tissue. How well the tissue recovers after the infection depends on the ability of stem cells to replace the lost cells, and this function varies by organ system.
So, while healthy young people are more likely to survive, they are not immune to potential long-term consequences of infection. And this translates to increased long-term health care costs.
My whole point about singling out people most at risk and imprisoning them so as not to inconvenience people at lower risk is about feasibility. While it might sound superficially nice to “protect” those most at risk, it is not very doable. In that respect, it has a lot in common with the old fable about the mice and their plan to bell the cat. It sounds good, until you start thinking about the details. I don’t know your age, but are you really willing to accept permanent imprisonment once you reach a certain age, because society at large decided that it was okay to allow Covid-19 to become endemic because eradicating it was too much of a challenge? Your retirement should be your golden years, where you get to do all of those things you never had time for when you were working. It should not become a prison sentence.