Thread by @bansisharma

We shouldn't exaggerate the threat of coronavirus if we have facts and reason to adjust our thinking.

At the same time, let us not hide behind the 'pre-existing conditions' (i.e. comorbidities) to explain away deaths that would not have happened for years without coronavirus.

Facts as I understand them. Coronavirus is:

a) extremely deadly if you are over 80.
b) vanishingly non-fatal if you are healthy and below 50.
c) very dangerous to people with comorbidities at any age.

The set of people that fall into that (c) category is very large.

We have ~6 million people over age 80. With great care, it should be relatively easy to isolate them from being infected.

Not so easy to isolate non-elderly people with comorbidities for any length of time, because their numbers are enormous.

Look at the numbers for comorbidities that are particularly dangerous in case of coronavirus.

a) Over 35 million Americans have a chronic lung disease like asthma and COPD.
b) Over 35 million Americans have diabetes.
c) Over 30 million Americans have heart disease.

There is some overlap in those numbers, but even accounting for that, leaves us with somewhere between 50 and a 100 million people with pre-existing conditions that can make coronavirus potentially fatal for them.

This is what makes this problem so vexing for policy making.