Originally Posted by
oc2005
New York proves your point -- NY state population is roughly 19.5 million, and as of now there have been 27,400+ COVID deaths in NY state. So 0.14% of the entire state population has already died from COVID. Considering 100% of the population isn't infected and there are still currently infected people who are sadly going to die, we know with certainty that the mortality rate (at least of the strain in NY) is greater than that of the seasonal flu, and likely is significantly so.
I agree with you, to an extent. However when you're looking at the number of death's, you have to factor in the population that died. If you exclude people over 65, and those with known predisposing conditions (high blood pressure, obesity, diabetees and others), the percentage of people who died is somewhere between 0.3% (Netherlands), 0.7% (Italy) and 1.8% (NYC). Meaning that even if the death rate overall is 6%, if you're in NYC, your odds of dying as a middle aged, healthy individual are roughly .018 out of a 100.