The thing about the media coverage of the bug from Day One is that they believed everything that the Chinese told them.
And they went for the coverage that had the most exclamation points!!!!!!
If it bleeds, it leads.
So... They based their coverage on statistics referencing ONLY those cases which presented for medical treatment. Those folks are the worst of the worst cases to start. People who have a mild case of the snifflies don't go running to the doctor. People who have something that is really nasty do.
And from what I've read, about 95% of the "cases" are of the very mild/maybe not even noticed variety. So, of the 5% who do seek medical attention, a MUCH smaller number will die. Karen seems to think that "2% of people are gonna DIE!"
Yeah, there's gonna be fatalities.
Now, what causes this? How much is traced back to treatment? It was learned about a year ago that ventilators don't really do much. At least much other than shred a patient's lungs as ever-increasing pressure is used (and here we have one of the "lasting side effects of Covid" - the severely damaged lungs. Not from the bug, but from the treatment. High-flow cpap O2 seems to work much better, and without the adverse effects. And people are still arguing about the "Trump remedy," which has seemed to work pretty well in anecdotal cases. The instant that treatment became politicized, things started to really go downhill.
Now, here in St. Louis City, population about 319,000ish, our overall fatality rate is... 0.145%. And if the City is anything like the County, over 50% of those fatalities were from skilled nursing facilities, long-term-care, nursing homes, and hospices. Hospices. Folks with DNR orders on file.
Karen gets irritated with that number, because it is NOT 2%.
It's basically a version of the common cold. You're probably going to catch it. And you may, or may not, notice it. And, for the record, the common cold kills a lot of geezers.