China virus may be less deadly than we thought: Update

A study out of Massachusetts indicates that the coronavirus may be much less deadly than we thought.

Previous studies showed that the vast majority of people who have had the virus didn't even know they were infected.

One of those studies, the one in Santa Clara CA, showed an infection rate of only 5% yet even that was 85% higher than the previous estimates.

The Massachusetts study indicates that 30% of the population in one town have had the virus without showing serious symptoms.

Clearly since we know how many people have died suddenly discovering that the number of people infected, the other number needed to compute the lethality of a disease, was too small by a factor of nearly 100 or even more will dramatically reduce our estimate of how deadly the virus is.

This is both good and bad news.  It's good because it puts the China virus closer to the risk level of the flu if you catch it.  It's bad because it indicates that the virus is more contagious than the flu so that you're more likely to catch it.

The latter argues for continuing social distancing.

The former, coupled with the fact that massive unemployment and forcing people to stay at home will lead to deaths from suicide, drug use, etc means that it's time to balance our response to the virus in order to minimize overall deaths.

So we need to continue to act responsibly, no stadiums full of people or crowded restaurants , but we can reopen most small businesses and young people, who are at least risk, can be allowed to move around freely and go back to work if they can't work at home.