Projected coronavirus deaths in US are at about 60,000. A dumb celebrity doctor said that opening schools might increase mortality by 2%. That would be an increase of about 1,200. Idiots tweeting about this translated this as two percent of schoolchildren would die, or that 2% of the US population would die of it!
It's pretty basic. If there is an increase of X% in a cause of mortality, that doesn't mean that X% of the population will die from that. So if cancer deaths go up 5%, that doesn't mean that 5% more will die from cancer. You have to know the death rate first, from a certain cause, and then you add 5% to that.
The idiot dr. apologized, but he should have corrected the math so that people wouldn't be so confused.
h/t Clarissa's blog.
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