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Simple back-of-envelope calculation...
The US population is 330 millon. If the average life span is 66 years(*), then USA has 5 million deaths a year, or 13,700 a day. Currently, the daily corona toll is roughly 1500-2000 daily deaths - at most 15% of the death count. A fraction of these persons might have died for other causes, if they hadn't died from corona. To estimate how many additional deaths corona has caused, we will not know until we can compare it to the years before and after. (Deaths tend to vary somewhat with season, so for the most reliable result, figures should be compared from the same month of the preceeding and succeeding years.)
(*) Also note that expected life span is highly dependent on how old you are: If you have survived the dangers of being a baby, a child, a youth, a young adult... You have avoided several pitfalls, then you will not pull down the average for those reasons. You will probably live longer than the average for the population as a whole. If you are a newborn kid and all the dangers lie ahead of you, the risk of dying before you grow old is present, reducing the expected life time for your age group. This is far more pronounced in less developed countries, and more in the Afro-American population (especially large-city males) than in well-to-do WASPs.
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ZurdoDev wrote: a bigger scam than Y2k was.
Of all places where people should know that Y2K was no scam, it's a developer site.
I still very clearly remember fixing dumb code like:
int nYear = atoi( "19" + strRelativeYearOffset );
As soon as you had a date from 2000 or newer, the "two"-digit year string became "100", so for 2007, nYear became 19107.
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dandy72 wrote: Of all places where people should know that Y2K was no scam, it's a developer site.
Of course there were some programs and OSes that needed updated. The scam is how many people believed the world was going to end and how many y2k "engineers" there were going around putting certified stickers on computers.
It's BECAUSE I am a developer that I know it was not as big a deal as everyone else was out to make it. That and the fact that I have a brain. 
Social Media - A platform that makes it easier for the crazies to find each other.
Everyone is born right handed. Only the strongest overcome it.
Fight for left-handed rights and hand equality.
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The reason I correct anyone who claims it was a "scam" is that some believe nothing had to be done.
I always point out that it turned out to be mostly a non-event, exactly because money was spent to review and correct systems that did the sort of stupid thing I provided as an example...not in spite of it.
At the other end of the spectrum, as you pointed out, are those who believed the world was going to end.
ZurdoDev wrote: how many y2k "engineers" there were going around putting certified stickers on computers.
Depends on the methodology.
I was involved in automating the certification process of system BIOSes by setting the clock forward a few seconds before 2000/01/01 00:00:00, waiting for the rollover, then reading the BIOS clock back. Then those systems were marked as certified or not, depending on the value read back. Nothing silly about the exercise (we did find some systems that went back to 1900), although we made it clear that was the extent of that particular test.
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dandy72 wrote: that some believe nothing had to be done.
I never met or heard of anyone thinking that nothing needed to be done. Same thing with covid.
Social Media - A platform that makes it easier for the crazies to find each other.
Everyone is born right handed. Only the strongest overcome it.
Fight for left-handed rights and hand equality.
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ZurdoDev wrote: I never met or heard of anyone thinking that nothing needed to be done
I have.
First-hand.
Repeatedly.
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Don't go thinking I "hang out" with these people. 
Those beliefs are the reason I don't hang out with them.
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You just imply.
In jest, before someone can call you out.
I don't jest; you're a coward. 
Bastard Programmer from Hell
If you can't read my code, try converting it here[^]
"If you just follow the bacon Eddy, wherever it leads you, then you won't have to think about politics." -- Some Bell.
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Will you shut the f*** up, we all know it was blown totally out of proportion but most of us made rather a lot of money from the remediation, especially in the finance industry.
These guys are ruining it for the next scare mongering the IT industry can foist on the managers (if you work out what it will be I'd like 0.2% please)
Never underestimate the power of human stupidity -
RAH
I'm old. I know stuff - JSOP
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ZurdoDev wrote: However, on a serious note, this pandemic is turning out to be a bigger scam than Y2k was.
That is not yet final. Our Great Leader Donald Duck Trump is panicking that US econony may be deep down in a pit at election time. Right now it seems like he is saying: Forget those worries about the virus! Get the economy going!
I am certainly not the only one fearing that this strategy may backfire. For the last 6-8 weeks, USA has experienced roughly 1500 corona deaths a day. The fall the last two weeks is so minimal that it cannot be trusted to be a trend. The "opening up" so strongly pushed from the central administration could very easily revese this trend.
I do not know where to draw the borderline between a "scam" and that which is not a scam. Two thousand corona deaths a day? Five thousand a day? Ten thousand? If opening up leads to ten thousand deaths a day for a year, it could reduce the US population by 1%. Is it still a scam? Or does that depend on which one percent of the US population dies from corona?
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The problem is everyday there is a new article about how numbers are not being reported accurately and how they are reported too high. This thing is no where near as bad as the media is making it.
Social Media - A platform that makes it easier for the crazies to find each other.
Everyone is born right handed. Only the strongest overcome it.
Fight for left-handed rights and hand equality.
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I have noticed that Our Great Leader Donald Duck Trump has stressed that point, obviously worried about the fact that his country is rapidly climbing the ranks of deaths per capita, while he is fighting vigourusly to let the virus loose to get his economy going again in time for the election. In that situation, it obviously benefits his case to ascribe as many of the deaths as possible to other causes, totally unrelated to his "opening up".
He may succeed in hiding away a share of the deaths as "not corona related", but only in the short time range. I have noticed one change: At one of the most used (and respected) sources of corona information, worldometers.info/coronavirus[^], updates from the USA for the previous day used to come in a steady stream the following day. The last week or so, there has been very few updates through the day: almost all updates are made the last 1-2 hous before the daily counters are reset. So unless you remember the total count from the previous day, or explcitly look up "Yesterday" data, chances are that you will see only a minor fraction of the total actual values reported: They are visible only for an hour or two before being reset at midnight.
Note that we are not talking about reporting the deaths of today, but of yesterday - data being reported is up to 24h old. This would be perfectly understandable if we were talking some underdeveloped country that had always been slow in reporting due to a poorly developed infrastructure. We are not. The updates used to come much earlier, but quite suddenly, they were beginning to be delayed. That change came remarkably close to when DDT started casting doubts about the corona death counts.
One result of this is that when DDT opens up for the both the economy and for the virus, the rest of the world will have a stongly justified scepticism to the official US death figures presented after the opening of the country.
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Member 7989122 wrote: data being reported is up to 24h old.
Data reported can be much older than that.
If someone at a retirement home dies it's usually not reported until the next day, unless it's during the weekend, then it can take a few more days past Monday, because the clerks need to catch up.
Doctors report to Counties, counties report to regions and regions report to countries. Give or take a few levels depending on country and organisation.
Every level have its own slack which add zero to several days for every level. This slack is also multiplied when people are overworked.
When reading up on it I was surprised how NOT flawless the system is in most countries.
Member 7989122 wrote: Our Great Leader Donald Duck Trump
Stop it now, this is not the soapbox.
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You might argue with him with many arguments, but stop using the pejoratives and the political irony because it might get fast out of control.
M.D.V. 
If something has a solution... Why do we have to worry about?. If it has no solution... For what reason do we have to worry about?
Help me to understand what I'm saying, and I'll explain it better to you
Rating helpful answers is nice, but saying thanks can be even nicer.
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If anything it's most probably reported to low.
Many people that get sick and die are never tested, so they're not included in the statistics.
Also, in many countries you're excluded from the statistics if you don't die in a hospital.
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ZurdoDev wrote: The problem is everyday there is a new article about how numbers are not being reported accurately
Proof?
The news reports confirmed cases which have been tested. Most people aren't tested and the number of actual infections is higher.
ZurdoDev wrote: This thing is no where near as bad as the media is making it.
Even bigger. There'll be more consequences.
Summer is coming. Your petty opinion can't change that. And I, will make a profit on your back.
Bastard Programmer from Hell
If you can't read my code, try converting it here[^]
"If you just follow the bacon Eddy, wherever it leads you, then you won't have to think about politics." -- Some Bell.
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ZurdoDev wrote: this pandemic is turning out to be a bigger scam than Y2k was.
Tell that to @OriginalGriff and his wife.
Or to my cousing and his wife.
Or to the mother of my best friend.
Because to my classmate in primary school, you can't say anything it anymore
And to one couple neighbours of my father... Both (he and she) dead.
I ask you to be a bit more respectous with this damned thing.
Only because in your area is not that bad, it doesn't mean it is so "harmless" to be considered a scam.
Consider you lucky if you don't have to see it from a close point of view.
M.D.V.
If something has a solution... Why do we have to worry about?. If it has no solution... For what reason do we have to worry about?
Help me to understand what I'm saying, and I'll explain it better to you
Rating helpful answers is nice, but saying thanks can be even nicer.
modified 16-May-20 7:24am.
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I suspect the "Z" in the user name could be a misprint ... 
"I have no idea what I did, but I'm taking full credit for it." - ThisOldTony
AntiTwitter: @DalekDave is now a follower!
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ZurdoDev wrote: However, on a serious note, this pandemic is turning out to be a bigger scam than Y2k was.
Two things:
1) Y2K wasn't a "scam" - it took me six months of hard work to ensure that all company systems would operate properly post 01/01/2000, and a lot of that time was finding a data-compatible replacement for the elderly UNIX box running the company accounts system - which would have failed, and temporarily crippled the company cashflow while it was sorted out.
Y2K looked like a scam because a heck of a lot of people in a heck of a lot of fields worked damn hard to make sure that nothing untoward happened (except under controlled conditions to prove there was / wasn't a problem). If we had all ignored it, the company would have returned to work in early january to find the only way to find out if a £10M+ turnover company that traded world wide through a distributor network was owed money, and if so by who, and what for was to go through the mountains of paperwork in the archives and start cross-correlating again ...
2) Covid is not a joke: it may be a "minor inconvenience" for the young and fit, but they can still infect others, and older, more vulnerable people do not have an easy time ot it, if they even survive. And that includes your parents, grandparents, their friends, your older coworkers, your neighbours, the people who sell you stuff, clean up after you, stack the shelve so you can buy crap, and on, and on ...
If you aren't young, fit, and healthy this is a killer, or if not makes you wish it had - and remember that athletes have been struck down and even killed: Here Is The List Of Sports Stars Who Died Of COVID-19[^]
The attitude of "I'm all right Jack" is fine, but when you assume it's a scam and a joke you mean "I don't care about anyone else but me" and that stinks.
"I have no idea what I did, but I'm taking full credit for it." - ThisOldTony
AntiTwitter: @DalekDave is now a follower!
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And the reason men die 4 years before their wives ....
Because they want to.
"Time flies like an arrow. Fruit flies like a banana."
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Matthew Dennis wrote: And the reason men die 4 years before their wives ....
Because they want to.
It's amazing the institution of marriage has lasted this long. It seems that nearly everyone thinks it's torture. 
Social Media - A platform that makes it easier for the crazies to find each other.
Everyone is born right handed. Only the strongest overcome it.
Fight for left-handed rights and hand equality.
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Yeah, and we just celebrated our 40th year of 'torture' in isolation.
Which wasn't so bad. We dislike most restaurants as they are too noisy and all the same.
We are very good cooks and made an amazing Salmon Wellington for our dinner.
And all the wine we wanted as we didn't have to drive home.
"Time flies like an arrow. Fruit flies like a banana."
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