Typically the US has deaths of 2.8 million/year-the US has a large population (I haven’t checked but likely third in the world after China and India). There are an estimated 10 million people in the US that are immune compromised and always at high risk of dying from respiratory infection be it viral, bacterial, fungal, etc. There has never been a suggestion to lockdown the healthy population to protect these individuals. It seems to me that this lockdown didn’t arise fundamentally from an altruistic desire to protect others but from personal fear of infection and that fear fanned by the media.
The last estimate I saw was 30,000 deaths in Medicare certified nursing homes. The policy of sending known positive cases to nursing homes had a material impact on the death rates.
The ICU’s overflowing narrative was always based on a very small number of hospitals. This is clearly seen by lack of use of the Naval hospital ships and temporary hospitals that were constructed and not used in many cities.,
Someone mentioned H1N1 as resulting in less deaths than this virus. H1N1 was more deadly for children and young healthy adults rather than older individuals and so the total lost life expectancy from H1N1 is high compared to the high risk population for this virus. Hong Kong flu had a higher number of deaths than this virus.
QOUTE
Great points on influenza in general. The population most likely to get seriously ill is young people and the older population as well as immunocompromised people. This virus with few exceptions seems to not be as serious in our younger population. That is a good thing.
Here is a video of Fauci in 2009 stating that school will be restarting without an H1N1 vaccine and unfortunate that children are dying from the virus
https://www.c-span.org/video/?290959-4/infectious-disease-prevention
Thank goodness there isn’t a cable news channel that is based on showing sad deaths in the US around the clock (and there are always sad deaths around the clock). Many people would be psychologically immobilized by the constant reminder that life is transient.