For the record - Statistics grow more grim.

[BGBD]

25. That's smart

I've heard even higher factors tossed around as the potential range by some people who know what they are talking about.

I think this virus is a lot more prevalent than the official numbers. There are probably a couple million infections across the country that haven't been tested, aren't presenting for care, or don't even realize they are sick. I think the fatality rate of infection is much, much lower than we are seeing as well. I think it's going to end up closer to seasonal flu, .1 or .2%, but unlike seasonal flu there is 0 immunity. The virus is just running wild because it has nothing to stop it.

That means the high numbers, like 2 million deaths isn't possible, but something on the order of 300-600k would be in line with worse case, or potentially some higher given the odds of overloading healthcare facilities. From looking at ILI data, I think this thing started spreading around the 3rd or 4th week of the year, but flu was getting the blame. This years predominant flu strains were B-Victoria and H1N1, but it was a pretty bad year, which isn't typical for those two strains to cause. Usually the H3N2 years are the hardest seasonal flu's like back in 2017-2018. I think the driver of that was COVID-19.

Now it has had time to build up and we are seeing hospital overrun, not because we have 75k cases in NY, but because we have 2 million cases in NY.