I heard NPR’s story “Herd Immunity Response To COVID-19 Pandemic Can Be Problematic”. It made me realize there is going to be deep grief over the loss of human life over the next year due to the pandemic.
I am working on making new shareable condolences messages cards and images. There is nothing you can say or do that can take away another person’s grief over loss but showing up evenly remotely to hold space with a loved one who is grieving is important. My hope is the new art cards can help create that emotional support.
I came to this realization from listening to the story and then calculating out the numbers based on current COVID-19 data.
If enough people get sick, some die, and most recover then there can be “herd immunity” but there are problems with this idea for coronavirus. NPR gave an example of South Korea which has 50 people a day getting sick. In 1000 days (about 3 years), they would have 50,000 cases which is 0.1% of their population.
The new story notes herd immunity is guessed to be at 50% – 80% of the population. In the US, we have 60,000 cases a day so it will take into 2021. There is also the problem that people could be re-infected by the virus. Likely, winter will be a time to get data about reinfection, but a vaccine will be needed to resolve the pandemic.
The news story noted that if herd immunity was possible (meaning no re-infections) then the death rates have been considered too high by governments as a solution.
I looked up the numbers. My math could be off but here is what I came up with from the current data.
Per https://www.census.gov/popclock/, the US population is 329,992,681. The death rate for coronavirus in the US is 3.6% per Johns Hopkins (https://coronavirus.jhu.edu/data/mortality).
How many people will die within the 50-80% infection range?
329,992,681 X 0.5 = 164,996,340.5 X 0.036 = 5,939,868.258
329,992,681 X 0.8 = 263,994,144.8 X 0.036 = 9,503,789.2128
About 9.5 – 5.9 million people are going to die until 50-80% of the US population is infected with the coronavirus.
The CDC puts deaths from coronavirus, influenza, and flu all together for its mortality and has the rate at 6.4% falling from 8.1% as of early July. This percentage rate doubles the above numbers. (https://www.cdc.gov/…/2019-…/covid-data/covidview/index.html)
How many people die each year in the US? What do those numbers look like compared to normal death rates? What is the normal death rate for flu and influenza?
Here are the CDC tallies from final reported deaths as of 2017. About 2.8 million people die a year in the US and 55,672 die from flu and influenza.
Taking the low number of death projections from above (50% infection with a 3.6% death rate) of 5.9 million people means a 211% increase in the American death rate compared to 2017.
However, that is a comparison of overall deaths. If you take the 55K deaths due to flu and influenza and compare that to 5.9 million that is a 10,669% increase. 2017 numbers from the CDC website are below.
https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/deaths.htm
- Number of deaths: 2,813,503
- Death rate: 863.8 deaths per 100,000 population
- Life expectancy: 78.6 years
- Infant Mortality rate: 5.79 deaths per 1,000 live births
Number of deaths for leading causes of death:
- Heart disease: 647,457
- Cancer: 599,108
- Accidents (unintentional injuries): 169,936
- Chronic lower respiratory diseases: 160,201
- Stroke (cerebrovascular diseases): 146,383
- Alzheimer’s disease: 121,404
- Diabetes: 83,564
- Influenza and Pneumonia: 55,672
- Nephritis, nephrotic syndrome and nephrosis: 50,633
- Intentional self-harm (suicide): 47,173
UPDATE: I had a question about how the 3.6% death rate got calculated. You get 3.6% when you take US numbers and divide (# deaths) / (# active & recovered infections).
The current infection (23Jul2020) in the US is 4.12 M. There are 1.23 M recovered and 147 K deaths. See https://www.google.com/search?q=covid+death+us
147 K / 4.12 M = 3.6% death rate (COVID-19 dead / active infection & recovered)
However, that assumes that there would be no new deaths in the people who have an active infection. If you assume that the 147K deaths are part of the 1.23 M recovered group then
147 K / 1.23 M = 11.9% death rate (COVID-19 dead / recovered)
CDC had the death rate as 6.4 – 8.1% in July. The CDC does not separate out COVID-19 deaths from annual flu and influenza deaths in its US death rate percentage.
Yes, the death rates vary by gender, age, & ethnic group. People of color (POC), men, elderly, & those with co-morbidity diseases (diabetes, obesity, hypertension, etc.) are at a higher risk for death.
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