So what if Covid-19 actually is "less" deadly than the flu?

From what we know right now based entirely on the statistics as they stand, for the average adult American under the age of 45, the rate of death from the Covid-19 virus is around 0.2 percent, which is about double the rate of the typical flu bug (0.1 percent).

While the current "overall" numbers suggest a death rate more in line with 4% - that includes rates upwards of 15% for people over the age of 75, many of whom (as cold as it sounds) were likely any virus away from passing away.

The problem is there is much unknown in terms of how many people may actually have the Covid-19 bug and either had mild symptoms or no symptoms at all. The more testing we do, the more likely it is that the amount of people who have had the virus will likely go up, while the amount of deaths from Covid-19 will remain the same.

As it stands, nearly everyone getting critically ill or passing from symptoms associated with the Covid-19 virus is being tested. Where someone has died from related symptoms and never had the testing, doctors are now able to provide Covid-19 as the cause of death. As it stands right now, the CDC shows more "presumed" deaths from Covid-19 than "presumed" cases. This obviously seems highly illogical, not to mention mathematically impossible (every presumed death should be automatically added as a presumed case by basic reasoning of common sense). But I digress.

But as testing ramps up (especially the anti-body tests which will show whether or not someone previously had it) the number of cases will start to go up (possibly way up) without any change to the number of Covid-19 deaths.

Pretty much all anecdotal as well as empirical data suggests that at least half (or more) people who contract Covid-19 will be asymptomatic (showing no symptoms). Tests also suggest that a great deal of people will see minor symptoms, rather than the sort of life threatening symptoms that sends people to the Hospital to get tested. This suggest that our current testing is way underestimating the number of Covid-19 cases, again without affecting the bottom line number of deaths.

So let's say that we actually have double the amount of Covid-19 cases than have currently been confirmed by the numbers. That would mean that the bulk of the population has no more to worry about from Covid-19 as they would from the typical flu.

But the anecdotal and empirical data so far suggests that doubling the amount of cases is likely just the tip of the iceberg. By doubling the total, that would put the total number of cases at about 1.5 million, or about 0.4% of the US population. Yet, researchers are estimating that those numbers are significantly higher. Some researcher are suggesting as much as 10 percent of the population might have already been infected. Other anecdotal random anti-body testing has shown between 15-33 percent of the people are testing positive (many without having had any symptoms)

But let's say that the ten percent rate is accurate, then the total rate of death (including everyone) would literally drop to about 0.1% overall. Those under the age of 45 would see the numbers plummet to approximately 0.009% death rate. In other words, it would mean that only one in 10,000 infected with Covid-19 under the age of 45 would actually be dying.

Now it may be that ten percent is an overstatement (or it could be an understatement). But what we do know is that it's much higher than the 0.2% of the population that has tested positive so far. As those numbers increase from more and more testing, the death rate will continue to go down.

The question will be when everything is all said and done... how much did we overestimate the deadliness of this virus (because we obviously have overestimated it) and to what cost did that overestimation come with?