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Without a lockdown, most of the country will eventually be infected. NYC currently has 21000 excess deaths, so extrapolating that to the rest of the country would mean 21000*328M / 10M = 690,000 excess deaths. That's assuming that nobody else in NYC is going to die of Covid 19, even after lifting the lockdown, so this is an extremely conservative projection, and it's already close to 1M deaths.

What's implausible about this? Is Covid 19 less lethal outside NYC? Can R remain below 1 anywhere in the country, without a lockdown?



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Sorry, you're right. I did the arithmetic wrong, thinking that 1M deaths would represent 3% of the population, instead of 0.3%. My mistake!

The rest of my point still stands.


I mean I agree it's plausible, but it also seems likely that it's more lethal in NYC because of population density.

More infectious, sure? But more lethal? Why?

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