I realize there is not an answer forthcoming to this question. But I wish someone would ask, of those who say we should just live with a certain # of deaths going forward and that it's time to accept that as the price for moving forward. What # of daily deaths should we accept? Is there an actual limit, or will that be ever changing as the numbers rise?
500 per day? 1,000 per day? 1,500? Or if it gets to say 2,000/Day, will that be the # to accept? Just curious.
I would love to know this and I pester all kinds of people with this question. It looks to me as if Americans collectively decided to get way more active out in society when the death rates fell to about 800 per day, and at 500 per day, I think a lot of people would happily "go back to normal" (naturally excluding the entire healthcare system, including dentistry).
500 deaths per day would be ~15,000 per month. 180,000 per year, mostly aged 50 and above. At current case mortality rates, that would mean about 3 million infections per year and an additional 500,000 needing longer term care, without about 200,000 of those qualifying for various forms of disability. Since we now know that CoVid pushes people into diabetes, the rate of diabetes would start to rise, and with it, earlier heart attacks and other deaths. Average life expectancy, already dropping in the US due to obesity and drug overdoses, will drop by a few years.
Currently unphased 50-somethings will rethink their lifestyle as they realize they have a 1% chance of dying if they get CoVid.. 60-somethings, facing a 3% death rate if they get CoVid, will stay home (and their spending in restaurants and on travel will dry up as they save for healthcare).
When 20-somethings and younger die of Covid (in their small numbers), every case will splash across the news. In the US, way more 50-somethings are dying than in any other nation and the percentage of overall deaths among the very elderly dying is lower than in UK or France or China or Italy.
Can professional sport or Disneyland resume with this level of risk? Will the international community accept that at any given time, there are a million active cases of CoVid in the US, for them to bring back to their own nations?
Personally, I think that for a nation our size, the deaths need to be fewer than 500 a day, and the demographics of the deaths need to be mostly over 75 (as in other places).
As long as people can see that CoVid is endemic in the largely asymptomatic working population, many are not going to want to return to non-essential activities (including international visitors wishing to come and spend dollars).
It does make me wonder if people will come to regard other forms of death as casually. The overall valuation of human life, inside the minds of many humans, will change.
