Non random mixing

The mode of spread and populations affected matter . We know that in China the spread was predominantly intrafamily spread.

Now we have a situation where care homes and hospitals are the predominant locations for disease spread. This will skew figures for fatality rates because these cramped facilities aggregate the oldest and sickest in society in confined environments. This is non random mixing where the virus spreads and has a disproportionately damaging effect in some areas of the population (similarly we see this in BAME communities in England).

There's a risk that we extend lockdowns unnecessarily for the general population because the disease persists in these institutions. Instead it would make more sense to focus directly on mitigating the impact in these facilities and gradually easing restrictions elsewhere. Stop care workers working across multiple facilities. Having separate clinical teams with more on call staff for hospitals at night so some solely cover covid wards and others non covid to avoid cross contamination risks etc.

Hopefully there won't be an extrapolation of statistics from virus transmission and fatality rates within hospital and care homes to the population at large. Any fatality rate from within these environments could be adjusted against an expected mortality rate from the population being studied so a more clear headed political decision can be made as to how dangerous this virus really is.

I worry you will overestimate how serious the virus is if these populations are overrepresented simply because they weren't able to socially distance as effectively and were already the most vulnerable.

pragmatism hopefully