I don't know if we can really know this information, but I'm wondering if we have a reasonable guess as to what population would get the coronavirus if society was operating more "safely". Clearly, if we went back to business as usual, with no safety measures (social distancing, masks, wiping things down, etc...I'm not even talking about closing schools or shutting down businesses or anything like that...just the basic stuff we can all do) in place, then it would be probably that the vast majority of the population would eventually get it.
But if one lesson we learn from this episode is that perhaps we ought to be a little more cautious about how we engage in public, what percentage of the public is likely to get this virus? Are we talking 25% (in a nation of 330 million, that would still be 82.5 million people)? Are we talking 50%? What's the rough guess?
Let's say it's one out of three people if we just use those measures. Now we know that ANYONE can die of it. Old and sick, young and healthy, we all have some risk of dying of this. But it's still clear that statistically the vast vast majority of people dying from it are old and who already have compromised health. That's the data from Italy and elsewhere.
So for MOST people up to age 60, say, you stand about a half a percent chance of dying from this *if you get it at all*. So I'm not a math guy, but if:
- 33% chance you get it
- 0.5% chance you die if you get it
Shouldn't the odds of a relatively healthy person under 60 dying from the coronavirus be basically 33% x 0.5% = 0.165%?
Of course I have no idea if the 33% number is correct or if I'm even doing the math right. But consider this:
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/14/us/opioids-car-crash-guns.html
The odds of dying in a car crash are 1 in 103. That's not 1 out of every 103 trips in a car. I think that's over a lifetime. The point is that at some point we look at the actual risks of X and decide if X is worth it anyway. I'd venture to say if the actual odds of normal, healthy people under 60 of dying from coronavirus was 0.165% (or thereabouts), we wouldn't be nearly as concerned about it as we presently are, and more people would be willing to take risks with the virus in order to get back to some semblance of a normal life. Football included (there's the tie-in with the thread!).