CDC estimates 140 million Americans have had COVID, about double case reports

About 37 million infected in omicron wave, and 58% of kids were infected at some point.

Read the whole story

 

[Eurynom0s]

I'm actually kind of stunned more people haven't had it. This is definitely on the low end of what I would have guessed, though my guess wouldn't be worth the sticky note I wrote it on.

A friend of a friend apparently has had four confirmed cases of COVID, and probably had it an additional time back in March 2020 based on symptoms described at the time. AFIAK, he's vaccinated, but has not been taking any other precautions. My guess is that there's a heavy skew in case rate stats toward people who had it multiple times.

 

[Eurynom0s]

Back of the napkin calculations on US Covid deaths.

US Population
329,500,000

US Covid Deaths
949,000

US Population who had Covid
140,000,000

% of death for someone who has had covid
0.68%

chance of death for someone who has had covid
1 in 148

% of death for US popuplation
0.29%

chance of death for US population
1 in 347

Road deaths in US per year (average)
37,323

Years of Pandemic
2

Road deaths during pandemic
74,646

% chance of death from cars
0.05%

Chance of death from cars
1 in 1876

Calculations with citations: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/ ... edit#gid=0

Is there a way to get vaccinated against car crash deaths? It would be great if we could reduce our risk of auto-crash death by 53 times /s

It would not make a 53-fold difference, but if we all had to blow into a tube before our car would start, it would be statistically very noticeable.

If we had more rigorous driver training, as opposed to the "meh, they got the basix, only ran one stopsign, and it was just the front wheel on the curb in the parking demonstration, they'll get the hang of it in a few years". Also, if you are caught operating a vehicle while using a cell phone the license is REVOKED for a year, car is confiscated and sold at auction. That would greatly decrease the incidence of distracted driving that I see at least once or twice a week.

Distracted driving is a symptom of the fact that we've built most of our country in a way that forces people into driving as the only rational decision for how to get around, which doesn't go well with the fact that most people don't actually like driving and find it incredibly boring. Better public transit, walking and cycling infrastructure, that makes it so that only people who really want or legitimately need to be driving were driving would go a long way to getting rid of distracting driving.

Enforcement can't be everywhere and this "I'm bored out of my mind so it's not holding my attention" isn't something we can just train out of people. And there's never going to be any political appetite for tighter licensing standards and actual enforcement penalties as long as we've made car ownership a de facto requirement for basic participation in society.

 

[Eurynom0s]

Back of the napkin calculations on US Covid deaths.

US Population
329,500,000

US Covid Deaths
949,000

US Population who had Covid
140,000,000

% of death for someone who has had covid
0.68%

chance of death for someone who has had covid
1 in 148

% of death for US popuplation
0.29%

chance of death for US population
1 in 347

Road deaths in US per year (average)
37,323

Years of Pandemic
2

Road deaths during pandemic
74,646

% chance of death from cars
0.05%

Chance of death from cars
1 in 1876

Calculations with citations: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/ ... edit#gid=0

Is there a way to get vaccinated against car crash deaths? It would be great if we could reduce our risk of auto-crash death by 53 times /s

It would not make a 53-fold difference, but if we all had to blow into a tube before our car would start, it would be statistically very noticeable.

Something like 50% of car-crash deaths are alcohol-related in the US, so yeah, that would make a difference.

Doesn't the US federal government have a really fucky definition of what constitutes an "alcohol-related car crash death"? E.g. if there's a drunk person passed out in the back seat of one of the cars, now it's an "alcohol-related car crash".