1. I have been wondering about the current evidence on mortality rates. Assuming, as I do, that the death figures are reasonably accurate — I calculated an upper bound for the number of people dying of something else while having Covid and being mislabeled in an earlier post — the uncertainty is the number infected. I gather that the high estimates of number infected, hence low estimates of the mortality rate, use the percentage of a random sample who show the relevant antibodies as evidence of how many have been infected. But I have seen recent stories claiming that a large fraction of those who have been infected don't show the antibodies later. That is being discussed in the context of the question of whether having had it gives immunity, also relevant to whether a vaccine is possible. But it's also relevant to the death rate. If two-thirds of the recovered people fail to show antibodies, then a death rate calculated from the antibody data is three times as high as the real death rate. Are there any competent webbed discussions of this issue? Anyone here done calculations?2. I recently had an unpleasant thought about the politics of the response to Covid.I think everyone agrees that the better the economic situation as of election day, the better the Republicans will do. It follows that Trump would weight economic costs of lockdowns and the like much more heavily, relative to health costs, especially health costs over the next couple of months, than his opponents. According to which side you are on, you can describe that either as Trump killing people in order to make sure he wins the election or the Democrats trashing the economy in order to make sure he loses.Of course, health costs also matter for voting, but my guess is that most people make their decision in terms of the current situation, not what it was several months earlier. It's even possible that voters judge by the amount of recent improvement as well as by conditions on election day, in which case bad conditions, economic or medical, a few months back, might actually benefit the incumbent: See how much better things have gotten.
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