3000 to 1: Pretty good odds and why you shouldn't panic vis a vis coronavirus

If someone offered you a lottery ticket that the odds were 3000 to 1 that you'd win you'd buy it right?

Well that's how to look at the new higher death numbers that President Trump's task force is talking about.

They're saying that due to the mitigation efforts, shelter in place etc, instead of a million Americans dying we may see between 100K and 200K deaths.

Given that there are 330,000,0000 Americans that means that your odds of dying are between 1 in 3000 and 1 in 1650.  Hardly any reason to panic.

What people are forgetting is that lots of people die in America every year anyway.

Each and every year about 2.6 million Americans die.

Given that COVID19 is preferentially killing the old and those with existing conditions, precisely the sort of folks who are more likely to die any year anyway, an extra 100K is only an increase of around 4% at most and probably more like 3% or less.

100K deaths is 2.5 years worth of traffic accidents.

100K deaths is 2-3 bad flu seasons.

Now none of this means we shouldn't take drastic steps to keep the number low but it does mean that we shouldn't panic.

Don't hoard.

Don't sell all your stocks.

Don't lay off your employees.

Society will emerge just fine from this and the economy will pick right up so long as we don't panic.

When the Spanish Flu hit America in 1918 we didn't even pause WWI and the economy wasn't trashed.  Correcting for changes in population the Spanish Flu killed about 1.8 million Americans.

If we could weather that we can weather this.

While FDR did a lot of things wrong he's much better than modern Democrats like Pelosi and Schumer who want you to be afraid so that they can blame Trump.

FDR said at the start of WWII what Trump is doing; the only thing we have to fear is fear itself.

Trump is being honest but at the same time isn't pretending the sky is falling. For that Democrats and the #FakeNews media are attacking him.