There is a meme circulating on the interweb within boomer and conservative circles that claims that the "survival rate" of the coronavirus is 98.2% but that you don't see this "good news" anywhere in the mainstream media. In fact, in a New York magazine article with a Waffle House employee who had survived an extreme case of coronavirus that had required hospitalization, he mentioned these same figures as part of his argument that the lock down might be worse than the disease. And this from someone who almost died from coronavirus, but who now just wants to go out to grab a beer.

In the case of the person who shared this meme on my Facebook page, I pointed out that simple math indicates that this death rate translates into 6 million American deaths. (As a comparison, this dwarfs the number of American deaths from all American military conflicts combined, beginning with the Revolutionary War and including all present conflicts).