Coronavirus Pandemic (COVID-19) (SARS-CoV-2) [2020]

What do they count as 'other illness'?

 

Diabetes is at least a popular one, as well as cardiovascular diseases etc

 

Near 10% of the world has diabetes.
8% asthma
Almost 25% of the US has some form of cardiovascular illness
Almost 8% of the US has an autoimmune disease (there are a lot)
5% of the US is living with or has survived cancer.

There is going to be a lot of overlap on those. But I think it's important that people understand that a significant portion of the population is living with an underlying condition that puts them at risk for dying from COVID-19.

 

2009 H1n1 started in May and was initially slowed down by the summer months. It kicked into overdrive once flu season started the following fall.

 

The always fatal STD called life?

 

These aren't worldwide statistics, but you may still want to track CDC's estimates and surveillance for the current 2019/2020 flu season in the US, and compare them against covid-19 when the season is over. They say there's more flu testing during this season because of covid-19.

https://www.cdc.gov/flu/about/burden/preliminary-in-season-estimates.htm
https://www.cdc.gov/flu/weekly/index.htm
https://gis.cdc.gov/grasp/fluview/fluportaldashboard.html

 

why do you think they are taking measures now?

As for respirators, seen a few cases here. I.e. an old woman crying 'cos doctors removed her husband's respirator to give it to someone younger (dunno about the outcome, but yeah).

This happens 'cos there are few respirators. Still, I am priviledged, 'cos while there are things in this country I dont like and I'm a nationalist, Spain has the best health system in the world -those words dont come for me, but I think it's true-.

It's free, it works -the model should be copied...-, and there are good doctors.

 

Yup. Thanks for the links.
This once again highlights the total lack of awareness of masses about the influenza pandemic which takes place every single year.
The current estimates for the US Only:


Reminder: We have a vaccine and treatments for the above...and a shit ton of people are still catching it & dying...

 

I wouldn't say this is true at all. Flu season in every first world country has largely caused hospitals to run at capacity. The issues with the flu is well documented, however the number of strains defined by the flu are in the millions. And we have some real killers in there like swine and avian flu.

The vaccines carry the strains of the flu that is most likely to kill you. It's fairly effective in at least somewhat giving people a much better chance at surviving the ones that are deadly.

That being said, not everyone get a vaccine for it because we don't enforce it. So it's a matter of time before you catch one that can kill you.

With respect to _all_ the flu strains combined vs COVID19 for instance. The US is at: https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/us/
Coronavirus Cases:
462,391
Deaths:
16,454

Relatively speaking with your graph, at a simplistic ratio relationship, it would only take 1.6 M Americans to be infected with COVID to equal the high estimate of deaths caused by the flu.

Whereas the flu would need 55M cases.

This works very closely to the estimates that the CDC has put out months ago. COVID is approximately 30x more deadly than the flu. And the numbers work out very well in this case.

nothing is being blown out of proportion that I can see.

 

To reduce the death toll in the light of knowing that's at least a plus, whereas letting people die on the possibility it might be better in the long run is impossible to prove and certain to garner hostile public sentiment. That doesn't necessarily make it the right choice though. We'll see in a couple of years. We'll see what happen in three months when everyone's out of lockdown, does it start spreading again? And we'll see the economic fallout beyond that, in a few years. We'll see how well the economy recovers, and whether there are lasting problems or not.

Do you agree it's a numbers game or not? Do you agree that at the end of the day, there is a line drawn for acceptable losses?

 

Confirmed Cases and Estimated Cases aren't the same thing. Actual number of infections are probably severely underreported. 80% don't require hospitalization while 20-30% are asymptomatic. The same holds true for flu which is why the CDC gives flu estimates not actual confirmed numbers.

In this season alone, there have been 80,000 pneumonia/influenza related deaths in the US with about half happening since the beginning of the year.

Ultimately you don't need to show that Covid-19 is worse than normal every day pneumonia with such limited data. Its an unknown and you can't say how this pandemic will play out in the long term. It may progress for months without a reprieve that the spring and summer normally provides. Immunity may be short lived and people that get re-infected may respond progressively worse with each new infection. Leading to larger death tolls each season.

Drastic steps are needed. You may question the steps themselves but the current concern is warranted.

 

Businesses have employees, which get their expenses paid by the salary they get out of such businesses. And many of those employees have family and children that also depend on that salary
Have you seen the more than 10x spike in the unemploiment claims in US? How are we gonna flatten that curve? Are the saved elderly gonna create new jobs once the disease is over?
I may sound very cynical here, and I don't trully mean what I said said here this bluntly. I'm just providing a counterpoint because I feel you are parroting what has become the standard narrative which is shortsighted and simplistic. A bad economy can also kill, and it's the most dangerous to the poor and working class.

 

Those 'old people' are consumers who buy the products that companies make. So yes they do create jobs.

 

As I said, I was being overly simplistic in my counter to try to balance out the overly simplistic narrative from the other side. I don't really think we should say fuck it and let the elderly die. But we shouldn't think the problem is ONLY a matter of that. Everything is a tradeoff.

 

Sure it's a tradeoff, but the illusion the other side presents is that you can return to any level of normalcy and all that will happen is a few old sick people will die. There is no in between where you can keep things going and only a few old people die. The choices are stark.

 

True that.

 

The consequences of a dip in the economy depends a lot on where you live. If you live in a society where the agreement is that you care for the basic needs of all people, regardless of why they are in a situation that requires this, anyone who looses their job will be looking for a new one. And maybe remember how employers treated their staff this time around.
If you live in a country that cares less for those lacking money, the situation will be harsher obviously. We might even see some social change in such countries as a result. But this discussion starts to strongly stray into politics.

 

I think that's a cop out because you don't want to admit the truth. It's uncomfortable to acknowledge that letting people die is something we do all the time. But I asked a simple yes/no question.

Yes, I've already acknowledged the negatives of not doing anything, and that it's a difficult choice. Are you willing to acknowledge the same, that it isn't as easy as just saving lives*? That it all depends on an arbitrary, unwritten line in sand, how many is too many versus acceptable?

* We don't actually save lives, we just delay deaths. Everyone's going to die and every person who loves them and outlives them will have to learn to accept and live with that death. Sometimes we delay a death for decades; other times for months, but we don't ever stop it and we can't stop people from having to live with it. Which is why when we hear about 20,000 dead this flu season, we don't bat an eyelid.

Indeed. I've always held that the most important people in the world are the farmers, and they should be treasured above all others.

 

Nah it’s the artists, or at least that’s what some people were complaining about last night here on Catalan tv, ‘why are not us musicians, actors etc not classified as essential workers’

Sure everyone is important ‘except maybe most tax accountants, lawyers, bankers, derivative traders etc’ but some are more essential than others
Yet for some reason the ones that are of least value to society get paid the most, funny that
I’m saying this as a video game maker, thus I’m very low down the scale of value to society ladder

 

When it comes to keeping the human species going, food and water are the first essentials. Water falls out of the sky and is free flowing in many places, but food is hard to come by enough to feed the population we have, requiring farming. If everything else disappears, electricity, communications, health-care, etc., as long as there's enough food, humanity can rebuild. Without that, doesn't matter how many people with how much knowledge you have, theys all gonna starve to death.

Boris Johnson out of ICU, still in hospital.