Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Miscellaneous/2020 August 18

= August 18 =

Yet another COVID question
Two items here please, hence the misc. desk rather than math desk. 1.	Please can someone check my math…if the UK has a population of 66.6 million and there are 300,000 cases of COVID (I’m rounding off in case you ask) then there is a 99.6% chance that as a member of the UK population you will never even get the illness, and if by chance you do fall into the 0.4% that gets it, there is an 83% chance that you’ll live. So only 0.07% of the population has died. 2.	So what’s all the fuss about? Sure its dreadful for the 0.07% and their families, but is lockdown, ruining the economy, rampant job loss and facial coverings in all public spaces really necessary? Thanks. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 31.53.187.190 (talk) 08:41, 18 August 2020 (UTC)
 * No, there is a 99.6% chance that you haven't had it yet. That doesn't mean you won't get it later on.  If no precautions or restrictions were taken, it would spread much further.  From Googling, the UK death rate is 12.9% (which is slightly better than you have quoted).  If half the population were infected, that would mean 4.3 million dead, which certainly would be something to worry about.
 * 1) Besides, the 41,000 deaths we've had so far is hardly something to ignore.  That's 22 times as many people as are killed in road accidents, and 51 times as many people as were murdered in 2018.  Its 12 times the total number of terrorist murders since 1970.  And remember - that's in addition to all other causes of death (ish - the lockdown will have mitigated against some other causes of death, while exacerbate others). Iapetus (talk) 09:30, 18 August 2020 (UTC)
 * 2) (additional): And "ruining the economy, rampant job loss and facial coverings in all public spaces" really sounds like a case of Arson Murder and Jaywalking. Iapetus (talk) 09:34, 18 August 2020 (UTC)
 * UK death rate is 12.9% out of detected cases. If UK isn't having an epidemic of a completely different virus strain from the rest of the world it's safe to say there are 1 to maybe 2 orders of magnitude more than 300,000 infected. UK may not be as far from herd immunity as OP thinks but it would still entail at least several times more deaths. 95.168.121.117 (talk) 16:19, 18 August 2020 (UTC)
 * Your (1) assumes that as of now, no more people in the future are going to get it. That's not how an epidemic of an infectious disease works: if no precautions at all had been taken, virtually the whole population would likely be infected in quite a short time because of Exponential increase (see also Basic reproduction number). But for the measures already taken, many more people than is the case would already have been infected and many more would have needed Intensive care than the Health Service could possibly have coped with, so a greater proportion of them, and also many people with other unrelated serious conditions, would have died.
 * You also seem to assume that one either dies or completely recovers with no other consequences. This is quite wrong, a great many people who survive are turning out to suffer serious long-term debilitations that will diminish their quality and length of life. Since the disease is literally less than a year old, we don't yet know what all of them are, but some, such as heart damage, are already evident.
 * Your (2) displays a breathtakingly callous attitude towards tens (already) and potentially hundreds of thousands of possibly preventable deaths, if not more. If, as you are implicitly assuming, the death rate of those infected is around 15% and no countermeasures were taken, there would eventually be around 10 million deaths in the UK.
 * Of course, Wikipedia has many articles bearing on this subject which I am sure you could easily find if you looked: I will leave it to others with more expertise than I to point them out to you, if they choose. {The poster formerly known as 87.81.230.195} 2.123.25.153 (talk) 09:19, 18 August 2020 (UTC)
 * Precisely because many young people fall into the trap of this kind of reasoning, the rates are soaring now in many places. --Lambiam 13:57, 18 August 2020 (UTC)
 * "But for the measures already taken, many more people than is the case would already have been infected and many more would have needed Intensive care than the Health Service could possibly have coped with, so a greater proportion of them, and also many people with other unrelated serious conditions, would have died." This is a very important point that gets overlooked a lot. I have a friend whose rectal cancer diagnosis and treatment was delayed due to this overloading of the medical system. He seems to be doing well so far, but we have no idea how much better the outcome may have been if detection and treatment had been made earlier. --Khajidha (talk) 00:21, 19 August 2020 (UTC)
 * With less than a year of exposure (8 months), Covid-19 is the third leading cause of death in the U.S. after heart disease and cancer. I don't know how high it is on the list of causes of death in the UK but we still have cold weather and flu season coming which we don't know how they will impact COVID. Rmhermen (talk) 16:50, 18 August 2020 (UTC)
 * If it's any guide, Australia is just coming to the end of winter, and reported cases of flu have been at about 10% of last year's numbers. But then, we've taken Covid more seriously than most other countries, which is reflected in our deaths/population being the lowest of all developed countries. --  Jack of Oz   [pleasantries]  23:38, 19 August 2020 (UTC)
 * You were similar to NZ but are now at 18ppm vs 4. Vatican wins by all of the 12 fighting it off. 1 death and they're last place. Sagittarian Milky Way (talk) 13:50, 20 August 2020 (UTC)
 * San Marino has had 42 deaths with a population of ~33,344. [//coronavirus.jhu.edu/data/mortality] Vatican City has a population of around 800. It's close, but it's likely a single death will not put them in worst place in terms of deaths. Nil Einne (talk) 17:22, 20 August 2020 (UTC)
 * The lower flu numbers are fairly easy to explain. The precautions taken to not get Covid are not specific to Covid, they would work with any respiratory disease, including SARS, MERS, Influenza, the Common Cold, etc.  So, if you have extreme measures in place to stop Covid, you're going to have effect on all other respiratory diseases also.  -- Jayron 32 16:25, 20 August 2020 (UTC)