I've seen it mentioned a fair bit but the context of the death rate in terms of reducing restrictions on society is quite meaningless.
We could have 500 deaths a day for a week and lift the restrictions for example.
It's the infection rate that's the figure that determines this. If you only have 10 new infections a day for a week, that's the sign it's slowing down, not the death rate. I say this as sensitive as I can really put it but anyone in hospital who has the virus and is declining is a statistic in current circumstances. They aren't to me or you but they are to the people tasked with dealing with this.
If they die or make a recovery , it plays no part in the handling of the situation.
Once the infection rate comes down, that's when things can go back to normal. Now I know in current circumstances it's impossible to determine that . We aren't all getting tested and new cases are only being determined by hospital visits. That's why the testing is so important now , to really get a grasp of the widespread of the infection rate.
I know the point you are trying to make, but your infection detection is only as good as the number of tests you do or can do with in your existing infrastructure.
For example total case numbers are live, they are however all wrong, with likely huge rates of more infected that just haven't been tested. So im not sure its very responsible to be considering making a decision by governments based on a flawed stat such as rate of infection, no one has it really. Take the UK as an example how can you know the infection rate or number of cases in the country when the is very little community testing.
Two peices of vital infrastructure in the next phase of managing this, are testing but also speedy contact tracing. For me those two things need to be in place in key areas like the community, businesses, hotels, hospitals, health care workers, schools and nursing homes before restrictions can be lifted.
Another vital statistic that i think needs to be captured, is people who have been waiting for results but have recovered before they got the results. There seems to be a missing link there of people who could or who couldnt have had the virus, that needs to be followed up on for a few reasons, managing resources going on, others they may have infected and an idea around immunity and getting people back to work with some assurance - a virus passport.
