[conspire] deaths from COVID

[Rick Moen]

Quoting Paul Zander (paulz at ieee.org):

> I'm seeking some advise on a discussion outside of CABAL.
> 
> Someone wrote to me that COVID-19 is much over hyped.

It's far too late at night for me to give a serious, considered response
to this, so please take cum grano salis.  That precautionary statement
having been made:  How many deaths are required before taking this
seriously?

COVID-19 is the second biggest killer in the USA right now, just behind
heart disease.  That’s about to change, COVID-19, within about a month,
becoming our number one killer.  As I write this, there are 6,460,250
known cases of COVID-19 in the US, and it has caused, to date, 193,250
American deaths.  According to the Institute for Health Metrics and
Evaluation (IHME), an _additional_ 225,000 Americans will die due to
COVID by early December.  And that's just getting warmed up:

It's likely that, following Labour Day weekend and many places
insisting on having in-person school instruction, there's soon to be an
even bigger wave of infections.

So:  Over-hyped compared to what, I wonder?  The Cretaceous extinction?