You say 1.3 million would die. And how many would die of Corona virus as a single cause? To compare this runny nose with the Spanish flu is absurd.
I said that's the ceiling, based on the information we have today. Further, I specifically stated that many would NOT die because that number requires two assumptions we know not to be true: no improvement in treatment and no safe and effective vaccines.
"And how many would die of Corona virus as a single cause?"
All of them. If you've had diabetes and hypertension for 20 years and you get COVID-19 and die two weeks later, it wasn't diabetes and hypertension that killed you.
"To compare this runny nose with the Spanish flu is absurd."
You call it a runny nose. Hundreds of thousands called it a death sentence. Spanish flu killed about 675,000 Americans. At our current rate of deaths from COVID-19, we'll pass that by this summer. I think we'll avoid getting to that number thanks to multiple vaccines on the way, but your opinion that it's just a runny nose is not one that shared by very many and it's not one that's supported by the excess mortality we've suffered this year.
Now, at the same time, the political response to COVID-19 by the governors has been terrible. They've shut down economies - bankrupting businesses and families - which increases poverty, which is the biggest killer of them all. And they've utterly failed at providing people good guidance based on science which says people should be getting outside and exercising more; not staying couped up together indoors. But that's a far cry from claiming this is a "runny nose". That's insulting to everyone who's died and everyone who's lost a family member or a friend to this. And it lets people like Governor Cuomo off the hook for forcing nursing homes to accept COVID-positive patients. After all, if it's just a runny nose, he did nothing wrong. If it's a disease that's killing people, then knowingly forcing nursing homes to accept infected patients is criminally negligent homicide.
You may choose to live in Fairytaleland where it's all rainbows and unicorns, but I live in the real world where COVID-19 is a real disease that kills real people and where governors like Cuomo have exacerbated the situation with terrible policies that have caused tens of thousands of needless deaths and will continue causing more needless deaths through poverty long after vaccines have dropkicked COVID-19 out of our lives.