When those on the left and right were surveyed about Covid-19, those on the left thought the chance of hospitalization was 50%. It was 5%. All the alarms and fear caused those on the left to completely overestimate the harms.
Now that is a myth I have not heard. When and how were which people asked? And who is "the left" here? Just asking because I remember reading that people "on the right" thought Covid does not kill anyone and even if it did, it's all a hoax.
How a group of people assesses a risk is not relevant if the objective is the determination of actual risk. Here the 50% just serves as an anchor to make 5% look small.
If you want to get a handle on actual risk and wish to put it in context, a comparison with other infectious diseases is appropriate.
This flu season we have had about 24M cases and 310K hospitalizations with 13K deaths so far. This translates into a hospitalization rate of 1.3%, indicating a a three fold higher risk of hospitalization from Covid infection than from flu infection.
Then there is the immunologically naive population in which Covid spreads as an airborne illness with very high infectivity and one ends up with an average of about 350K deaths over a three years period, from 2020 to 2023.
The flu season is not yet over so let's just add another 7K to the 13K flu deaths and we get to about 18 times the risk of dying from the flu for Covid.
Given that the healthcare system is already strained during severe flu seasons, a disease pushing hospitalizations up by an order of magnitude should lead to massive disruptions in the delivery of care, possibly beyond the breaking point of the system.
Funny thing, this is exactly what happened.
But look, 5% is nothing ...
