Yeah, 2% is the standard and more plausible in many ways than 0.002% [edit, WRONG ,missed a decimal point, should be 2% & .2%]. My comments above are about what this study implies, this something new.
Italy has had 24114 deaths. If take those as being in Northern Italy with a 27,000,000 population, that's 0.8931 % of the entire population. Even adjusting for age, that can't squared with 0.002% death rate [wrong wrong, it's 0.08931%, which is possible but with a huge infection rate, which maybe].
I think you've misunderstood the comment by zucker52: your post is using 0.002 and 0.002% interchangably. It's quite hard to figure out what you mean when the numbers are off by two factors of magnitude in places.
For example:
> So a 0.002% "fatality rate" relative to total exposures,
You appear to be deriving this from the computation 601/221000. That gives .27%, not 0.002%.
> Italy has had 24114 deaths. If take those as being in Northern Italy with a 27,000,000 population, that's 0.8931% of the entire population
Yeah, 0.08931% of the population of Italy experienced fatality.
If we assume .2% fatality rate, that implies 50% of the population was infected (which might make sense with an extremely contagious virus but that's more than even the cruise ships).
The issue is you're not adjusting for the exponential fatality risk for old folks, and that those in Lombardy are the oldest in Europe. It's hundreds of times worse for old folks than for young folks.
The US doesn't have a hundred times less old people than Italy. The whole "don't worry about old people dying" attitude of those eager to "reopen the economy" is kind of despicable.
Florida has 20% of it's population over 65 and it's 21 million people might similarly be rather hard hit.
> The US doesn't have a hundred times less old people than Italy. The whole "don't worry about old people dying" attitude of those eager to "reopen the economy" is kind of despicable.
It's totally despicable, and it's not my position.
I propose we do what the UK proposed, and what Sweden is doing: keep all vulnerable folks inside, provide them with services such as groceries and any healthcare they may need on-site, and release the low risk to build a protective barrier of herd immunity around them. That should have been evident when I said "old people were hundreds of times worse off."
That's totally orthogonal to my point, which is that you can't project the mortality rate of a population that's overwhelmingly disproportionately affected, scale it linearly onto the world population and assume that'll be at all representative of the reality on the ground.
And yes, Florida may be affected very badly, and the plan may need to be adjusted accordingly.
Italy has had 24114 deaths. If take those as being in Northern Italy with a 27,000,000 population, that's 0.8931 % of the entire population. Even adjusting for age, that can't squared with 0.002% death rate [wrong wrong, it's 0.08931%, which is possible but with a huge infection rate, which maybe].