Saturday the 14th Update: Bad Math Edition

I’m seeing several senior citizens on my Facebook timeline pass around this meme. It’s amazing: they’re the most at risk, and they’re also the people most convinced that this is all a hoax to make Trump look bad. It’s a great example of just how gaslit these folks have been over the past 5 years. Anyways, if you don’t know already, here’s why there’s so much concern about coronavirus as compared to H1N1: the stat that is left off of this meme (conveniently) is fatality rate. H1N1 had a fatality rate of 0.02%, which is extremely low (the regular flu is 0.01%). Estimates of Coronavirus’s fatality rate are somewhere between 1% and 3.5%, which is extremely high. Let’s take that conservatively: if 1% of the people who catch Coronavirus die, and 61 million people catch coronavirus, how many people will die? Not 12,000, but about 610,000. That’s scary enough, but you know what’s scarier? CV is FAR more contagious than H1N1. 61 million Americans catching it would be an extremely low number…predictions are that it will be closer to 150 million. If that’s the case, then we’re looking at 1.5 million deaths.

So here’s why we’re all currently on lockdown: not because of “the media manipulating your life”, but because if 50 million people catch it at the same time, our healthcare system will be destroyed. Thanks to the CDC botching rollout of tests, the 1,329 number is a joke. We’re probably closer to a million people with it than a thousand. Does that mean panic? No. Does it mean that sports leagues shutting down and cities shutting down is all part of some “media conspiracy to make Trump look bad”? That’s so insane I don’t even know how to react to it. The fact that things are shutting down isn’t part of some grand conspiracy. It’s part of an effort to prevent our country from completely melting down in the next 6 months. Posting this nonsense is not only reckless, it’s dangerous. Please stop.

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