How we respond to the novel coronavirus should be based on emerging evidence about the danger posed by the virus - a reasonable road. Despite what many people hoped, COVID-19 is clearly worse than the seasonal flu.
The initial, ham-handed approach - which confined hundreds of millions of people to their homes except for government-approved purposes - should be replaced by more carefully targeted measures focused on protecting the people who face the highest risk.
Unlike the Spanish Flu, which commonly struck down healthy people in the prime of life, COVID-19 primarily kills elderly people.
The CDC estimates that the symptomatic case fatality rate for people younger than 50 is just 0.05 percent, compared to 1.3 percent for people 65 or older and 0.2 percent for 50-to-64-year-olds.
Age seems to be largely a proxy for serious preexisting medical conditions such as hypertension, heart and lung disease and cancer, which are independently associated with COVID-19 deaths and become more common as people get older.
Even taking into account underreporting of deaths, the crude case fatality rate, which currently is close to 6 percent nationwide, vastly overstates the lethality of the COVID-19 virus, since testing so far has been skewed toward people with severe symptoms, who are not representative of everyone who has been infected.
The current challenge is finding a way to emulate Florida's apparent success in protecting people who are especially vulnerable to COVID-19 without broad business closure and stay-at-home orders, which are unsustainable and economically ruinous.
The initial, ham-handed approach - which confined hundreds of millions of people to their homes except for government-approved purposes - should be replaced by more carefully targeted measures focused on protecting the people who face the highest risk.
Unlike the Spanish Flu, which commonly struck down healthy people in the prime of life, COVID-19 primarily kills elderly people.
The CDC estimates that the symptomatic case fatality rate for people younger than 50 is just 0.05 percent, compared to 1.3 percent for people 65 or older and 0.2 percent for 50-to-64-year-olds.
Age seems to be largely a proxy for serious preexisting medical conditions such as hypertension, heart and lung disease and cancer, which are independently associated with COVID-19 deaths and become more common as people get older.
Even taking into account underreporting of deaths, the crude case fatality rate, which currently is close to 6 percent nationwide, vastly overstates the lethality of the COVID-19 virus, since testing so far has been skewed toward people with severe symptoms, who are not representative of everyone who has been infected.
The current challenge is finding a way to emulate Florida's apparent success in protecting people who are especially vulnerable to COVID-19 without broad business closure and stay-at-home orders, which are unsustainable and economically ruinous.
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