The actual hospitalization and fatality rates for coronavirus have been pretty unimpressive lately, so the media keeps hyping the number of new cases (while failing to mention that hospitalization and fatality rates aren’t increasing at a similar rate).
Now this case is being used to convince people to be afraid. I have no idea what this young man died of. But if they can retroactively attribute his unfortunate death to coronavirus they will, which leads to my prediction: In order to keep the numbers up, anyone who had been tested for coronavirus and dies will be listed as a coronavirus victim but this change in counting won’t be made public, just the raw numbers.
You are of course right, but it does not cease to amaze me how much misinformation there is on the coronavirus. US academic here. My colleagues have all bought into the cases myth and are cowering in fear. Most think things are considerably worse than they were in March; one said to me last week that we’ll hit more daily deaths than ever before in August. One colleague in his late 30s is convinced that it is super-unsafe for him to teach in person until there is a vaccine; this is an otherwise healthy person. Two others are convinced that it is supremely unsafe to open the schools and we are killing our children if we let them go to school. One person has not let her 7 year old speak to a single other child since March in fear he’d get infected. These are all highly educated people with PhDs. I am speechless at the gap between reality and people’s perception of it.