How can a disease with 1% mortality shut down the U.S.

This piece is absolute garbage. 

First it assumes 100% infection of the populace (even the author acknowledges this is not realistic).  So why use a number like that at all?  Could have easily done the math using a more reasonable estimate based on herd immunity.  So right off the bat his numbers would be over estimated by anywhere from 10-20%.  And why 1% anyways when the IFR is estimated to be 30-50% lower...seems like this whole piece is designed to fearmonger.

Then he extrapolates further that there would be 19 hospitalizations per death.  Of course if you are 10-20% off on the number of deaths then he would be that number X 19 off on the estimated number of hospitalizations.

Third, if we are going to look at the rates of death and hospitalizations and use that to estimate the economic impact then we need to look at the people who are dying and being hospitalized and their true economic cost.  His numbers are based on an average across the whole population and we -know- that is not what is happening with covid.  The elderly and those with other serious health issues comprise a large proportion of those who are hospitalized and those who die.  A large proportion of these people would be hospitalized or would die from one of their other ailments anyways. 

And yes, there very well could have opened the economy or kept it open without it being destroyed considering that a huge proportion of the infected working age population would be either asymptomatic or only ever have mild symptoms.  

  

The CDC’s Best Estimate on IFR can certainly drop lower.

“Best estimate” doesn’t mean best case scenario.

The real issue is understanding overall impact to society is figuring out who has had it already, who has some level of immunity (potentially from exposure to other coronavirus infections), etc.

These things are just not known.

What we do know is that for the whole country, new cases are up ~150-200% since April / May, and yet deaths are down 60-70%.

This is certainly indicative that the CFR was WAAAAY too high back then to give an accurate view of IFR, because the virus was far more widespread than people knew.

I think the IFR will turn out to be lower.

My point was that atreyu said that 1% fatality was “very conservative”, meaning it could likely be higher.

I brought out the CDC’s “best estimate”, because that’s the organization that you all say we should be listening to.

And it’s substantially below 1%.

It’s not my number. I think it will be lower. I’m making it clear that this is the CDC’s number. There is nothing dishonest about that.