Alright so lets unpack this argument, because (1) this is a pretty extreme oversimplification, and (2) the unstated suggestion you make is to quite literally let millions of people die world-wide who wouldn't have otherwise:
> Data is showing that the infection fatality rate is around 0.5%-1%, and is concentrated in older people.
right, "old" (65+?) people are going to die anyway, lets just let them die sooner. How much sooner? Years? Decades? Does this really sound like a cogent counterargument to not letting people die?
Let's ignore the morality aspect of this, which I don't think is in your favor, to put it mildly. I don't really like people suggesting that millions of people should die because "this is sad, but at some point, everyone has to die." Yikes.
But lets pretend we live in a very nauseating reality where older people don't really matter very much. You should still want society shut down to prevent this spreading out of hand because this will easily and thoroughly overwhelm all of our healthcare resources, which will mean hundreds of thousands of people you actually do care about (i.e. non-older people) will also die from lack of medical care either from COVID, pre-existing medical conditions, new medical conditions, etc.
First, the .75% mortality rate is a one-time hit. It likely pulls some deaths forward, so the incremental death rate is maybe .5% in a single year. Again, this is terrible, and sad, but we should be mindful and accurate with numbers.
Second, people make lots of choices that increase their mortality risk by .5%. For example, lots of people eat at McDonald's on a regular basis, which certainly increases your lifetime mortality risk by .5%. And other people don't exercise at all. 30 minutes of jogging a day will lower your mortality by at least 1%, likely a lot more [1]. But we don't pass laws to force everyone to jog for 30 minutes a day.
With the new data, which is showing that mortality rates from covid-19 are not like smallpox 2.0, we should adjust our response to be more in line with responses to comparable risks.
Again, you realize debating the true value of the fatality rate is a bit silly when we already know healthcare systems will be overwhelmed (and have been overwhelmed already!!) if we hadn’t and don’t continue to manage this with severe measures? Do you agree with that statement? It doesn’t matter what the incremental mortality rate is. It doesn’t matter. We don’t know the true fatality rate, yes, but we do know it’s high enough that without severe restrictions on social life, healthcare systems will be overwhelmed, regardless of whether or not you think 1-2 million people dying from this vs 60,000 flu deaths is a big deal or not. Your argument was that our reaction is disproportionate, but it’s not disproportionate because if we don’t do this, healthcare resources will be overwhelmed and the economic damage could be severe in addition to the loss of life. Are you disagreeing with that?
> we already know healthcare systems will be overwhelmed (and have been overwhelmed already!!)
This isn't really true. It depends a lot on the state. The healthcare system in my area, California Bay Area, is completely underwhelmed. Here are some numbers from San Mateo:
If our goal is to flatten the curve to slightly below hospital capacity, current policy has flattened the curve way too much.
Current number suggest that only 1-3% of the Bay Area has been infected with covid-19. If you wan to get to 70% infection rate for herd immunity, it would take multiple years to get there at current rates.
> If our goal is to flatten the curve to slightly below hospital capacity, current policy has flattened the curve way too much.
Our goal is to simply avoid hospitals becoming inundated. How would it be possible to flatten the curve to "slightly below hospital capacity"? To do that we would need to know exact numbers on hospitalization rates from infections, have a testing capability that is far beyond what we currently can do, and then we would need to have fine-tuned control on peoples' behaviors and also never be wrong. We have too much ignorance about too many things to do this in a way that you would deem optimal. This is a disease that takes a median of 5 days to incubate, so as soon as we get something wrong (hint: we will get it wrong), it festers for 5 entire days before we know it, and then we're stuck with the consequences. The only rational choice is to take severe action and hope it's enough. It wasn't enough in Italy, it wasn't enough in NYC.
If you're saying that social distancing/lockdown policies are an "overreaction" because we still have ICU beds and ventilators, I think that's a pretty good sign. The entire point is to do something drastic now, and gradually ease distancing measures as it becomes safe to do so without causing additional large-scale outbreaks. As soon as we have the ability to contact-trace all new infections and can successfully contain outbreaks, we can start letting up.
> Data is showing that the infection fatality rate is around 0.5%-1%, and is concentrated in older people.
right, "old" (65+?) people are going to die anyway, lets just let them die sooner. How much sooner? Years? Decades? Does this really sound like a cogent counterargument to not letting people die?
Let's ignore the morality aspect of this, which I don't think is in your favor, to put it mildly. I don't really like people suggesting that millions of people should die because "this is sad, but at some point, everyone has to die." Yikes.
But lets pretend we live in a very nauseating reality where older people don't really matter very much. You should still want society shut down to prevent this spreading out of hand because this will easily and thoroughly overwhelm all of our healthcare resources, which will mean hundreds of thousands of people you actually do care about (i.e. non-older people) will also die from lack of medical care either from COVID, pre-existing medical conditions, new medical conditions, etc.