Given the number of deaths caused by STDs, it is perhaps justifiable for such data to be shared in the same fashion as one's Covid-19 status, assuming the sharing of the latter is justified.
COVID is unlikely dramatically more deadly than the flu, so the question is, if you're okay sharing your health data over COVID, why not the flu? It kills 650,000 people (60,000 Americans) every single year. The reality is widespread panic moments are when we lose our civil rights.
Remember 9/11? That year more people died slipping and falling in the shower than died in the twin towers. More people died because they chose to drive short distances instead of flying than died in the twin towers. And we got the Patriot act and a trillion dollar war. Humans have a way of overreacting.
> It kills 650,000 people (60,000 Americans) every single year.
That's over a ~6 month season. If you average that out it's 10k per month. We'll have 20k dead tomorrow from covid and it hasn't even peaked yet. This is with extreme lockdown measures implemented. How much worse would those numbers be if everyone was going about their business as usual the way they do the flu?
Well, a study of a German town showed 15% are already immune/have had it and a mortality rate of 0.37% vs the flu at 0.1%. [1] If you run the numbers and project that onto the US population we'd see an incremental 600K deaths this year. Unlike the flu, which mutates aggressively and recurs, we haven't seen much mutation of COVID. That means, unlike the flu which will kill 60K next year, and the following and so on, this will kill 600K once. [2]
So, my answer to your question, is an incremental 600K once. Although given those numbers are averaged and the impact is 100X worse for the elderly than the young, I question whether these would be incremental deaths at all.
In Italy the average dead its 80.5 years old with 3 underlying conditions. If COVID hadn't taken them, the flu may well have. One study showed a case fatality rate of 10% in the over-75s for H1N1.
Ideally, we'd isolate them, and let everyone else out like the Swedes.
> Well, a study of a German town showed 15% are already immune/have had it and a mortality rate of 0.37% vs the flu at 0.1%
You are comparing apples to oranges and calling it grapes.
It is 0.37% infection fatality rate (including clinically non-significant cases) vs flu 0.1% case fatality rate (from clinically significant cases). case fatality rate for covid-19 is much higher (say 2 % in Germany). Note that these are fatality rates, not mortality rates.
Second factor is that population has no imunity to SARS-CoV-2, while has some immunity to flu strains. Which means much more infected and therefore higher mortality rate even with the same fatality rates.
Overall, it seems to me that without any precautions it would be 10x-25x higher overal mortality (say 0.2 %) than seasonal influenza (say 0.01-0.02 %). Not great, not terrible.
Well, the link says 39-56 M illnesses, which means symptomatic infections (although some of them may be not diagnosed by doctor), while the 0.37% for covid-19 is just number of seroconversions (including asymptomatic infections, which are not considered illness), so not a comparable number.
With 39M-56M estimated cases, 24k-62k deaths and 330M population, you have 0.06%-0.11% fatality rate and 0.007%-0.018% mortality rate.
Less than 40% of cases result in any visit to a medical professional (# medical visits is about 0.4-0.5 of # cases, but some people will need >1 medical visit)
It's worse, about 3.7X worse according to the latest data, with impact massively skewed towards the older (100X more lethal to them than to a 20-40 year old).
