HRE wrote:
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No disrespect for your grandparents but let's think about this in terms of things like school classes, big road races and conference basketball tournaments, etc. People in that age group die. They do it from all sorts of causes. Let's say that confirmed 15% fatality rate is even a little low. Let's make it 20%. That means that 80% of the people in that age group who get the disease will survive.
You're making a popular mistake, following a common fallacy--you assume that the mortality rate is constant and matches what we've seen to date.
The variable that you're missing is one that many people are missing, although it has been explained over and over, is that hospitalization is required for many of the survivors. Unlike regular seasonal flu, this one is putting far more survivors into ICU.
To make sure you don't miss the point, that means that their survival (and thus the predicted mortality rate) depends on hospital facilities being available for them when they need them.
To be crystal clear, that means that hospital facilities need to handle the load; if they become overwhelmed, that may cause a radical change in statistics.
*This is the main reason to slow the spread--to spread (in time) the hospital load*