It seems that about half of everyone you knew got the supercold; the rest avoided it by good luck or had such mild cases that they didn’t notice. One person had a fever for ten days and almost had to go to the hospital, but they did eventually recover.
Nobody that you know died, though you did hear about a friend’s elderly great-uncle who caught the cold and died of complications.
In the contrafactual world where the pandemic just spreads in full force (without vaccines and without special measures to avoid contagion), I claim that your experience will be far worse than “no one in my social circle died, business as usual”. The best example here is probably Northern Italy in March 2020, and especially the city of Bergamo and its surroundings (where the pandemic did spread in full force for several days, before restrictions were imposed). In this context, maybe your social circle manages to avoid lethal consequences, but your local hospital explodes, your local graveyard explodes, your local retirement home abruptly lose half of the residents, your local newspaper reports seven pages of obituaries every day instead of one, and in your extended social circle there’s probably someone who has personally seen a convoy of military trucks transporting coffins away. I challenge anyone to live through this and conclude that there’s nothing especially bad going on.
Did you miss the second part where I point out that an unmitigated COVID pandemic played out in my brother’s town to almost no consequence? “Everyone got COVID and survived” was not a hypothetical scenario.
your local retirement home abruptly lose half of the residents
Even in the 80+ category, the fatality rate is only 15%.
I didn’t miss the second part, I just reported another scenario which also was not hypothetical.
How many people live in your brother’s town? If the whole community is 500 people (and does not include a retirement home), then I’ve no problem believing that literally everyone got COVID and survived. But the Italian data from 2020 points to a very different direction.
For example, in this article, they report the total number of deaths per town (every death, not just covid-related) and compare 2020 to 2019:
Town of Alzano Lombardo (~13.000 people): 123 deaths in 2019, 239 deaths in 2020.
Town of Nembro (~11.000 people): 121 deaths in 2019, 263 deaths in 2020.
Town of Albino (~18.000 people): 182 deaths in 2019, 292 deaths in 2020.
Approximately +100% deaths in one year is just not something I can ignore.
Regarding fatality ratio in retirement homes, I was basically citing the worst case lingering in my memory (this, also from Nembro, with 39% deaths).
In the contrafactual world where the pandemic just spreads in full force (without vaccines and without special measures to avoid contagion), I claim that your experience will be far worse than “no one in my social circle died, business as usual”. The best example here is probably Northern Italy in March 2020, and especially the city of Bergamo and its surroundings (where the pandemic did spread in full force for several days, before restrictions were imposed). In this context, maybe your social circle manages to avoid lethal consequences, but your local hospital explodes, your local graveyard explodes, your local retirement home abruptly lose half of the residents, your local newspaper reports seven pages of obituaries every day instead of one, and in your extended social circle there’s probably someone who has personally seen a convoy of military trucks transporting coffins away. I challenge anyone to live through this and conclude that there’s nothing especially bad going on.
Did you miss the second part where I point out that an unmitigated COVID pandemic played out in my brother’s town to almost no consequence? “Everyone got COVID and survived” was not a hypothetical scenario.
Even in the 80+ category, the fatality rate is only 15%.
I didn’t miss the second part, I just reported another scenario which also was not hypothetical.
How many people live in your brother’s town? If the whole community is 500 people (and does not include a retirement home), then I’ve no problem believing that literally everyone got COVID and survived. But the Italian data from 2020 points to a very different direction.
For example, in this article, they report the total number of deaths per town (every death, not just covid-related) and compare 2020 to 2019:
Town of Alzano Lombardo (~13.000 people): 123 deaths in 2019, 239 deaths in 2020.
Town of Nembro (~11.000 people): 121 deaths in 2019, 263 deaths in 2020.
Town of Albino (~18.000 people): 182 deaths in 2019, 292 deaths in 2020.
Approximately +100% deaths in one year is just not something I can ignore.
Regarding fatality ratio in retirement homes, I was basically citing the worst case lingering in my memory (this, also from Nembro, with 39% deaths).