[palmer]

I'm told a society can't cohere at a 30% loss of life. That's too close to half way between 50% and 2.2% for my comfort.

"Half way" is not a valid estimate. Let me give a simple example. I go into gas stations, subway stations, walmart, niemen marcus, and a similar variety of online forums and recruit people for my AIDS mortality study with a suitable payment. I reject anyone without AIDS and select randomly from the rest. I follow them for a couple years and see how many die of AIDS.

Meanwhile you go to a hospital ICU, find the patients with AIDS and randomly select from those. Which mortality study will be more representative? Do you think "half way" between the two studies is a valid estimate?

[null and void]

Nope. It's a worst case. See my post above, I guess bottom line for a whole society at ≈4%.

Still high, but not society killing.

But I also make a jillion assumptions, including that everyone who needs ICU care gets it.