https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/patients-with-heart-at...
> The possibility that patients may be suffering — and even dying — at home rather than going to a hospital led the American College of Cardiology to launch a “Cardiosmart” campaign last week, attempting to reassure a wary population and encourage those with symptoms to call 911 for urgent care and to continue routine appointments, through telemedicine when practical: “Hospitals have safety measures to protect you from infection,” it reads.
> “The emphasis here is safety,” said Harlan Krumholz, a cardiologist and health care researcher at Yale University and Yale New Haven Hospital, who advised on the campaign. “We want to make sure preventable deaths aren’t happening.”
> There is no pill, no action, no behavior, he said, that could account for the almost 40 percent drop in STEMI patients. “We don’t have a means to cut your risk in half,” he said. “Not even primary angioplasty or stopping smoking.”
If they gave people accurate statistics they could make an informed decision whether they want to go to a hospital.
More than 70k have died in the US so far - are we also going to blame the media for not scaring people early enough, or is that too inconvenient?
Even so, medical systems and coroners ought to be archiving samples for testing. Eventually there'll be adequate RNA and antibody testing capabilities. Without that data, we won't know what happened.
How thoroughly do deaths of the elderly and infirm get looked into as per the cause?
They are at home, watching their debt grow and wondering how they will be able to find a new job to pay their bills.
1. Don't do this, go to the hospital if you feel something different in your chest.
There's nothing for the USA as a whole, it will be compiled from states' records and estimates eventually. But it already seems obvious to me that the excess deaths in the next few years from secondary effects (avoiding hospitals, drug overdoses, suicides, stress/panic attacks, less traffic/police on roads, etc) will far outnumber the deaths where COVID-19 took away more than one year of life. I'm probably still in the minority with that belief.
Some of this is inevitable. Some of this is due to economic lockdown, which will simply crush third-world economies.
I had to visit the ER recently. I did not want to go but my doctor insisted. A family member who is also a doctor also insisted I go.
The ER was eerily empty. The ER doctor saw me immediately. There were only a couple of other patients that I could see. This contrasts to prior experiences in the ER where there is a long wait as I get triaged, with lots of people waiting to be seen.
Fortunately my situation was nothing serious. When I returned home and told my relative, he said his hospital's emergency department was also very light. In his opinion, there were a lot of people going to the ER who didn't need to go in the first place.
Edit: I am referring to non-trauma related admissions to the ER. E.g. I have a headache and I am going to the ER to be seen now.
One reason for the drop may be due to elective surgeries not being performed. And since more people at staying at home in a safe environment, due to COVID there will be fewer accidents. And far fewer medical mistakes too, not COVID related.
"The third-leading cause of death in US most doctors don’t want you to know about"
https://www.cnbc.com/2018/02/22/medical-errors-third-leading...
"Why Do Patients Stop Dying When Doctors Go on Strike?"
https://www.psychologytoday.com/ca/blog/slightly-blighty/201...
My personal take on this based on statistics and observation is that many medical procedures are not very effective.
Or trade short term risk, for long term benefit. Eg. Those that survive a bypass surgery may live longer. But it will shorten the life of those that it kills. Chemo therapy can kill you immediately, but if you survive the procedure, it may have also killed the cancer that then will increase your life expectancy.
I also think many medical procedures are not really changing the course of the disease. And being in a hospital is inherently risky. You are exposing yourself to other very sick people, and possible human errors in treatment.
ITs easy to fool yourself into thinking that what you are doing is having an effect. Consider the thousands of football fans in stadiums thinking they are changing the course of the game with cheering or booing.
Some other factors to consider - much cleaner air these days, no traffic/noise/rush and associated stress, and you can even hear birds singing through the day. Personally i find it very relaxing to not spend the days in our tightly packed badly air-conditioned to the point of serious sweating (our BigCo. is very big about its "green" energy saving chops) horrendously lit (those lights burn the eyes and make bright spot reflections on monitor, and the half-transparent blinds kill when afternoon Sun gets into those windows) "collaboration and communication stimulating" (read - very stressful) very modern open floor office.
This is also something you see in statistics, that after any large flu epidemic, the general population mortality figure drops to something significantly below average, especially for people in the 65+ age group.
You can see this very well on EuroMOMO [1] - check out the numbers for the Netherlands in 2018 from week 10 throughout 13. This is a flu epidemic there, and the aftermath.
Stanford was prepared for a huge influx of coronavirus patients, but they only have 20-30 in the hospital. This despite a steadily climbing death toll. My own GP says, if you get it, go to Stanford; they have the investigational drugs, and they're not overloaded.
Nationally, the US death toll continues to climb. Currently somewhere between 69,000 and 74,000, depending on the source. The SF Bay Area's shelter-in-place thing seems to have helped. We need to get more people wearing masks, though. Seeing too many people without masks. More of the good masks, too. You really need N95 or ASTM Level 3 masks to protect yourself; the cheapies only protect other people. That only works if almost everybody wears the things.
What's happening outside the US? The Financial Times tracker, which has been updated every day for months, shows the US death rate flat. Most other countries have peaked and decreased substantially.[2]
[1] https://www.mercurynews.com/2020/04/27/coronavirus-14000-sta...
[2] https://ig.ft.com/coronavirus-chart/?areas=usa&areas=gbr&cum...
Short-term exposure can increase the risk of heart attack, stroke, arrhythmias and heart failure in susceptible people, such as the elderly or those with pre-existing medical conditions, according to the statement."
https://www.heart.org/en/health-topics/consumer-healthcare/w...
https://www.theladders.com/career-advice/38-of-new-yorkers-a...
Staying home IS the public policy in many places right now. Mere weeks ago, my social media feed was full of information about hospitals cancelling all non-emergency procedures, being overrun, doctors flying to New York, PPE shortages, etc. I wouldn't be at all surprised if a lot of people who would normally go to the ER just in case are trying to tough it out at home. Or perhaps they're more alone and the person who would normally call 911 because they're having a stroke / heart attack simply isn't with them - because isolation and social distancing is also the public policy.
Public policy right now is to stay home or die of Covid 19. Many people are scared to even go outside or go to a hospital if they don't have the virus.
Starting to open businesses again and requiring social distancing would definitely help with the fear and more people would actually go to the hospital for non-covid health issues.
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S003537871...
"In 2004, the American Heart Association issued a scientific statement concluding that exposure to air pollution contributes to cardiovascular illness and mortality. A 2010 update elaborated on those risks.
Short-term exposure can increase the risk of heart attack, stroke, arrhythmias and heart failure in susceptible people, such as the elderly or those with pre-existing medical conditions, according to the statement."
https://www.heart.org/en/health-topics/consumer-healthcare/w...
I'd be curious about suicide statistics as well--would they be going up or down right now?
This lockdown is very hard on many people's mental health.
i wonder if a “bad death” is also a deterrent if you thought you were dying. or if emergencies don’t come with those kinds of calculations. not sure if/why covid calculation would be any more likely, though.
> "They still want patients to avoid hospitals yet not hesitate to go if there are signs of an emergency"
More like one of the tragedies of fearmongering.
The amount of non-emergencies the ER department sees is astounding.
What's wild is that we structure payment and regulatory models where a walk in at the ER costs more than a walk in at the urgent care located literally next door. Gotta self assess how serious the situation is if you don't wanna contribute to the high risk revenue pool.
Update: whoever downvoted this, I challenge you to state why.
Kept avoiding ER, I felt bad wasting time. Plus money.
Finally went in and they ran an extra test and found the issue. Probably had seen 30 doctors during all of this.
Some of the doctors were amazed I hadn’t dropped dead yet.
> One study collected data from nine hospitals across the country, focusing on a crucial procedure used to reopen a blocked cardiac artery after a heart attack. The hospitals performed 38% fewer of those procedures in March, compared with previous months.
> At Harborview Medical Center in Seattle, Dr. Malveeka Sharma has tracked a 60% decline in stroke admissions in the first half of April compared with the previous year
> MUSC, a major stroke center, averaged 550 calls per month over the past four months about possible stroke patients from the 45 to 50 emergency rooms that refer patients. But it has seen just 100 in the first half of April, said Alex Spiotta, director of neurovascular surgery.
This is not just happening at ERs, this is happening at the places ERs will refer you to, usually after checking whether you do in fact need immediate care.
Not giving details, but he turned out to be just fine.
And I hope to someday live in a world where medical error is the #1 cause of death. I hope we also focus on quality of life and not just quantity -- but if medicine seeks to continue extending life then the success case is that error is essentially the only cause of death. Those articles, and especially their headlines, are sensational and misleading.
And I suspect that is exactly what is happening with some of these medical treatments. They take out the weakest patients (with for example chemo therapy) and the remaining stronger ones will do better. But really its a statistical effect.
Same way you can improve test scores in a class, by getting rid of students with low IQ and work ethic. All of sudden, the average test taking ability will go up.
In New South Wales, Australia the medical sector had 1000 ICU bed capacity in January. When covid hit, it was rapidly expanded and currently over 2000 ICU beds are available.
At the same time all elective surgeries got banned (e.g. hip replacements etc) because some of those would end up in ICU.
At the peak of the outbreak NSW used 100 of those 2000 beds. Currently only about two dozen ICU beds are occupied. About 1% of capacity.
The real problem in the USA and most other Western countries is that there is no clear strategy to defeat the virus. The actions being taken are mostly consistent with "flatten the curve and wait for herd immunity", but that pretty much guarantees crippling economic damage and mass death.
But how many will get killed? Allowing people to drive down the street also kills people. What's the limit?
Yep, some people will die. That's unavoidable. Tens of millions die every year. Hundreds of millions will die per year in a few decades. That's life.
If you are at-risk, you should continue to avoid contact with others. But there's currently no cure for covid-19 other than your own immune system. The sooner the disease runs its course, the sooner we can return to normal. Sheltering in place forever means you prolong the propagation of the disease to excruciatingly long timescales.
So, generally, they're less busy than normal.
The problem with opening back up is, we've already seen the growth curve, and that was 2 months ago.
What happens when you multiple that same growth rate against a much higher baseline number of infected people?
As for the article itself: Reopening the country wouldn't fix that either because it's a catch-22 situation. The people most at risk of dying from COVID-19 don't want to go to the hospital because of the risk. So they put off emergencies until it's too late. You don't solve this problem by reopening the country because the fear and the risk for said people is still there.
My parents are a great example. They have breathing issues which makes them especially at risk. They're afraid of getting routine tests done because catching the coronavirus could be very deadly.
Lockdown isn't "free" like you seem to think. It has a very heavy cost. And some day (if not already), that cost will outweigh the lives saved from doing it in the first place. Because the combined suicides/mental health/homelessness/domestic violence/etc. increases from lockdown will be greater than [people at risk of covid-19] deaths.
Plus, if lockdowns are keeping hospitals empty, social distancing and masks without the lockdown part would allow us to utilize them more (without them going over capacity).
[0] https://www.ctvnews.ca/health/coronavirus/he-never-got-a-cha...
Government closure had nothing to do with this decision. In fact I've zero trust in US government recommendation around this and don't factor their recommendation into any of my personnel decision making around this topic.
Believe I also read that there's a vaccination window for TB--it doesn't work for adults. So each year of lowered vaccination coverage matters that much more. Globally a million people die of TB each year.
Staying home from the hospital is absolutely not policy anywhere, nor has it been, ever. You missed the context.
Herd immunity through vaccine or infection is the only rational strategy for a disease like C19. There is no vaccine, and possibly will never be a vaccine. Sorry to be a realist.
Sure, the war isn't over, but it's at least plausible this will be effective for a long time. Versions of it are working in China and a number of other countries that were able to stop the spread in time.
If there is never a vaccine, then there will be harder decisions for all these countries in the future about how to deal with countries that failed to defeat the virus. It seems fine to worry about that later.
Risks are generally thought to be immediate, but very low.
This is the big flaw with the "open up" notion: it fundamentally won't work anyway. How is "opening up" the economy going to help Jet Blue when no one is willing to fly? Who is expected to fill those movie theaters and sports arenas? Who's going to sit in a crowded restaurant?
At best, opening up will get us a half-alive economy. And at the price of a much longer time until a true recovery starts.
Stay home. We can beat this. The regions that started lockdowns early (c.f. Europe, New York, the west coast) are well on their way to containment. It's the "open up" regions and the ones with partial lockdowns[1] that are the stragglers.
[1] I make this point every time it comes up: but for goodness sake something needs to happen in Nebraska. It's right on the cusp of exploding into a worst-than-NY disaster and no one is talking about it.
The new cases/deaths stats in California, for example, are not showing any long-term decreasing trend: https://www.latimes.com/projects/california-coronavirus-case...
This stuff works. All these places could have easily blown right through health care capacity like Milan, but they didn't. The really frustrating thing is watching it work, then watching everyone figure things aren't so bad and demand that we "open up", when the only reason things aren't so bad is because we didn't.
Another month for these early states. Just be patient. As for everyone else, it's going to be much longer than if they had just followed the lead of the lockdown set.
At every one I have been to (not a lot I admit, maybe 4 in my life), I had to both provide insurance card AND pay my copay before a doctor would see me. Without payment, they send you to go to the ER.
1. https://www.forbes.com/sites/lisettevoytko/2020/05/06/majori...
As far as I can tell the numbers are statistically computed estimates, based on real reported deaths, so it's not actual counted deaths, and there's still reporting lag skewing the last couple of weeks.
Your point is orthogonal to the point of the article.
If we don't see them in the ER, it makes sense that they're staying home on purpose, or not handling symptoms until it's too late (?).
Might as well save it for the people who actually get sick and need confirmation for treatment or cause of death.
Citation?
Think of everyone else: those relatively regular/average people in America, the average Joe. They have bills to pay for, but living paycheck to paycheck, they can't pay any of it. So now they're seeing whats the best way to get income. Unemployment check? Website is down. Where to get food? Food banks are barely sustaining.
Yes, there's definitely a reduction of stress in some areas, but I believe that thinking of everyone, I mean everyone not just in tech, makes you realize that as a whole, a lot of people are stressed out of their minds when this can end.
Me = small business owner. Revenue less than 2mm per year.
Major public company clients moved payments to net 60 and net 90 from net 30
2 clients emailed April 1st (emailed) effective immediately no contractors or agencies effective immediately.
1 major retailer we have done WiFi access point metrics for all stores in North America (roughly 4k stores) had an invoice bounce back to me. After researching I find on LinkedIn my stakeholder is no longer with the company. I push hard to get someone in AP to reply and finally I hear they stopped the entire program and didn’t think to tell us. 11 years of providing this monthly data analysis and collecting roughly a billion data points a month... gone. Without a heads up.
2 new prospective projects set to kickoff April May moved to June July.
PPP covers last years salaries. We have sizable raises to key staff (project managers in January) . 60% of my workforce if outside of the US and can’t be covered under current monetary relief. I’ve not taken a check now in almost 2 months.
Entire line of business (WordPress) is now zero.
So yes stress is in relative forms. for me it’s confining, silent, and endless.
For me I’ve been running this company for 21 years now (started in college). I’ve hit a couple of near breaking points (08 and now). And it’s an unbelievable amount of stress. I sympathize, empathize and understand what people are going through.
What gets me through this is the following:
- The time I’ve gotten to spend with my family, my kids is absolutely amazing and I will treasure it forever - I love my team and I’ll do what I can to keep them employed and without disruption - Even with the stress and uncertainty I still love my job and what I’ve built
On the business side: - As a service business I now fully and completely understand that I need to figure out how to make a more resilient business that can weather business interruption to this degree and scale. It’s easy to blame covid but it’s inevitably my job to have considered this and prepared for it. This is everything from specific contract language changes to planning cash flow for a 40-60% reduction in business for maybe 6 months.
Anyway, I thought I’d share, maybe someone finds solace in knowing they aren’t alone and that they don’t need validation for how they feel.
Hang in there everyone!
When we come out of this, who will be left behind? And how many of those lives could’ve been saved if we weren’t in quarantine? That’s not to say the quarantine isn’t necessary, but it’s an important question to ask, as its a significant cost that isn’t obvious.
Where do you live ? They don't have phone or Internet ?
I exchange daily with every people I call friend; I exchange daily with my close family; I exchange weekly with the rest of my family and people I don't consider friends but still care about.
I'm not a health worker nor someone working in something that matters and I have the luck to still be able to work from home so I've seen as my duty to make sure everyone I care about doesn't feel abandoned and is okay.
I'm not judging or anything but it seems odd to me to call someone a friend and still don't make anything possible to be sure they're safe in those dark times.
Is there research showing people are more sedentary now?
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-52416330
As a counter anecdote, I know many people that only leave their house a few times per week, including for walks. They are definitely more sedentary now.
no, that's a big extrapolation..
one possible counterpoint: couples in healthy relationships could still be going out more, whereas those in dysfunctional ones might be fighting more due to more proximity or exascerbated economic hardship
Or are you trying to claim that the virus is a hoax or something? This is a real risk. We've seen what happens in Madrid and Milan if you lock down just ~10 days too late.
Kaiser heavily pushes their nurse hotline to help minimize costs. I can hardly fathom going to either the Kaiser emergency or injury departments[1] without calling the nurse hotline. The nurse, in consultation with a staff physician in the call center, does an assessment, tells you what to do next, if anything, and schedules any appointments--phone physician, in-person primary physician, or calls ahead to the emergency or injury clinic to minimize wait times.
Our current healthcare system is so fractured that most people have no idea how to go about seeking healthcare in the most convenient and smoothest way possible. Smaller regional hospitals and even some regional systems don't have the scale to do what Kaiser does, at least not nearly as efficiently as Kaiser. High costs are baked into the system.
[1] Injury department is for broken bones, cuts, etc that happen during the day. At the SF Geary medical center they're conveniently located across the hall from the imaging department.
I don't have any data, but I imagine that explains the similar serious accident rate.
I was accustomed to urgent care without a phone call. I tried to apply that experience to Kaiser. I found a Kaiser facility, via their web site, that claimed to offer urgent care during certain hours. I even double checked the definition of "urgent care" on wikipedia. I arrived at listed opening hour. The security guard I found there didn't know anything about it, except that no one else would show up for another hour. Then I wandered around trying to figure out where "urgent care" was, but there was some confusion about it. Eventually, I got to a desk somewhere. I was told to call for an appointment, which I did from there. All in all I spent three or four hours waiting and shuffling around between different desks. It was a very frustrating experience.
Eventually, I found out that everything in Kaiser starts with a phone call. But I don't think I was ever told that. What you're supposed to do, as far as I can tell now, is just call the number on your card any time you want to do anything.
The hospital is liable for the costs in the ER, so fuck no are they going to tell you go home and get some rest if they can charge you $2000 to do that after taking your insurance.
Yes, it stinks that people are suffering due to the lockdown, but the government could (if it were so inclined) pay people to stay home indefinitely. It clearly can’t manage the virus, however.
I'm a bit skeptical, and would be even if instead of "indefinitely" we were just talking about a couple of years. I'm not necessarily disagreeing, but I'm curious about how the math would work out, in your opinion.
Yes, that’s somewhat apples to oranges due to the way the reserve operates, but the money is available if the will is.
As far as I can tell, public health experts (and basically all medical experts) are in over their heads on this one. It's like 1970s computer scientists issuing guidance on a stuxnet-esque infection. Sure, they are the experts in that they know more about computer science than other people, but they also have no experience with something like stuxnet-esque worms and so... how valuable is their expertise? "We recommend turning off all computers until further notice to stop the spread of stuxnet. Meanwhile, we will take 6-12 months or more to try and reverse engineer it and then we will issue further guidance." Except... "turn off your computer for a year" isn't going to fly with the general population. After so many months there will be riots and people will start disobeying.
Sweden's response is also based on public health experts. And in Sweden, the apolitical public health agency is fully in charge, politicians meddling with their work is against the Swedish constitution. And the Swedish public health agency has stated that their response takes into account comprehensive long-term public health and not just short-term.
Is Sweden's response wrong? Maybe. But do you have a better plan than what a group of public health experts have come up with?
This would then reduce covid-19 to a risk factor on par with every other self-inflicted risk. If you worry about your health, stay home, if not go live your life. It would actually be compatible with our constitution as well, which would be nice.
This could be done by comparing measures taken in a big random sample of confirmed cases with big random sample of general population.
HN isn’t the place to push hyperbole and straw man. Go back to Reddit for that.
I don't see anything more to your argument than what the woman standing with a sign saying "I want a haircut" is saying. Your attitude is dangerous. People will die unnecessarily if state leaders do as you suggest. This is what the modeling says, and you have offered nothing to suggest otherwise.
Not that bold, since it is how most diseases/viruses work (with a few exceptions like HIV, and there's no reason to assume covid-19 is an exception)
> Would you say the same thing about the Chickenpox
Yes, chickenpox is one-and-done. Once you've had it, you (basically) can't get it again.
> Are you willing to bet on a far deadlier second wave not occurring?
Yes - "Survival of the fittest"
If there is a second wave, it will only affect survivors of the first wave, and as far as I can tell, the vast majority of first-wave survivors had mild-to-no symptoms. Kids are barely affected at all, it seems.
Are you suggesting that people who have the ability to isolate themselves at home while still earning a living are somehow "fitter"? As I suggested before, your argument as a whole amounts to nothing more than the woman who waves the sign saying "I want a haircut". Is your life more important than your barber or stylist's? If not, why are you asking them to risk it for you?
> Not that bold, since it is how most diseases/viruses work (with a few exceptions like HIV, and there's no reason to assume covid-19 is an exception)
This is objectively wrong and I'll lead into why in the next point.
> Yes, chickenpox is one-and-done. Once you've had it, you (basically) can't get it again.
Chickenpox is not one-and-done. If you catch chickenpox, the virus remains latent and can manifest itself as Shingles.
And to explain a bit of history here: I'm not talking about a second wave of the current strain. I'm talking about a deadlier strain. That was what my reference was to earlier flu pandemics and I highly suggest you do a bit of reading on that. The Spanish flu had mutated to a far deadlier version during the second wave and spread all over the world.
For all the comparisons people make with the flu virus, people seem to ignore that viruses can come and go in waves. The flu did not 'end', it mutates every season and the reason why we're able to keep it under control is because of widespread vaccination preventing it from growing exponentially. You claim that's how most diseases work, but that's not how the flu works. The danger of letting the coronavirus run rampant is severely understated by our complete inability to control it right now.
If you relax lockdowns while you still have a significant number of active cases then expect outbreaks to reoccur. So is the plan to stay locked down until active cases in the applicable area are essentially zero, i.e. eradication? If so, how long will that take? If not, what is the plan?
I know there's no easy solution here but even my well-informed California friends don't seem to know what the plan is.
The basic idea is that you stay locked down until the outbreak size is small enough that you can test every contact of every positive case to catch them before they spread.
This takes a lot of testing. And unfortunately the one body in the USA with the financial resources to foot that bill is conspicuously silent on a plan for rolling out expanded testing. But this is how it has to work. The alternative is, as everyone here loves to scream, more expensive.
But there's no magic wand where people just decide to start working again. That won't happen, either becuase they're scared or because the outbreaks run out of control again (which is to say: people won't exit lockdown voluntarily without containment ever, either they're scared now or they'll be scared of the results they see).
So call your representatives and get testing funded and scaled. Really there is no other option.
I agree with everything else you say. Except calling my representative won't help because I'm not American and I already know what the NZ strategy is...
The boils covering your entire body is one and done. Shingles is far less severe by comparison (my sister had it in high school and it was just a painful rash on her side that went away after a few weeks- and yes, it was definitely confirmed to be zoster despite her young age) and only reactivates in a small percentage of people who had chickenpox. Shingles kills basically no one compared to chickenpox.
> The danger of letting the coronavirus run rampant is severely understated by our complete inability to control it right now.
There's tons of evidence suggesting the mortality rate is way over-estimated right now and the amount of total cases is way higher than the number of confirmed cases due to people getting it and showing very few, if no, symptoms. This is nothing like the black plague. Hardly anyone is dying, even in places without shelter in place.
> Kilpatrick, from UC Santa Cruz, said that if the estimates from New York stand up to scrutiny, the infection fatality rate in New York City would be approximately 0.8%.
> [...]
> Epidemiologists at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, for example, analyzed data from the Diamond Princess, the ill-fated ship on which more than 700 passengers got infected. Researchers adjusted for the fact that cruise passengers are older than average and estimated the coronavirus’ infection fatality ratio as 0.6%.
[...]
> Now let’s talk about the flu. Comparisons to the flu keep coming back like a many-headed hydra, and they roared back last week with a vengeance.
> The estimates I’ve seen for influenza IFR range from about 0.14% on the upper end to 0.04% on the lower end. So if the IFR for this coronavirus ends up being around 0.5%, that’s still many times worse than the flu.
[...]
> Marc Lipsitch, head of the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health’s Center for Communicable Disease Dynamics, has estimated that ultimately 20% to 60% of the population could be infected with COVID-19. By comparison, because of immunity provided by flu shots and past infections, only about 10% to 20% of the population gets sick with influenza every year, according to Kilpatrick.
> Kilpatrick sketched out what this meant: “If it’s five times deadlier than the seasonal flu, and three times as many people are going to get it, that means we’re going to get 15 times as many deaths. And 15 times 30,000, which is the middle-of-the-road kind of a seasonal flu year, that’s 450,000 deaths — about half a million deaths — that’s a pretty big, scary number, I think.”
All quoted text is from https://www.propublica.org/article/what-antibody-studies-can...
Is 450,000 people "hardly anyone"? More importantly, what matters more to you: their lives, or corporate profits?
Nobody alive on earth right now has ever experienced anything like this before at this scale. So by definition, there are no "veterans", there is no one with any experience whatsoever, just people who did case studies of past pandemics when air travel didn't exist and people that ran some simulations. Inexperienced people, no matter how expert they are, are terrible at predicting the future (re: the last 20 years of climate change expertise). "Oops, the model was wrong again, but we learned more for next time!"
> Do you know what contained the outbreak in China
How do we know it's contained? China kicked out all western journalists and nobody can audit any of their numbers. China is not exactly a clean/sanitary place, I wouldn't put it past CCP to simply cover it up to save face. Or maybe they realized it's not really as bad as it seems and they just let it run rampant.
How is Japan faring so well despite not sheltering in place and not testing?
> There are just five ICU beds per 100,000 people in Japan, less than half the number in Italy, and doctors' associations have warned that hospitals are already stretched thin. [0]
I notice you skipped South Korea. What stopped it there?
Glad you are admitting your own ignorance. Now, if you would just listen to the people who do know a little something about viral epidemics and their containment, you could cure that little condition.
In the meantime, you should stop spewing these dangerous ideas. You sound exactly like the Texas Lt. Governor. And, let me tell you: neither I nor my family are dying for you.
---
[0]: https://www.cbsnews.com/news/japan-state-of-emergency-extend...
South Korea is anomalous. Has literally any other country been able to replicate their success?
> Glad you are admitting your own ignorance. Now, if you would just listen to the people who do know a little something about viral epidemics and their containment, you could cure that little condition.
Containment/minimizing covid-19 deaths is a very short-sighted variable to optimize for. Leaders need to weigh the cost of containment vs. the cost of prolonged lockdown/economic collapse. I have yet to see you acknowledge containment policies as having any downsides whatsoever. I don't think you really understand how desperate the situation is from an economic standpoint. The Fed can't just print money to solve every problem; otherwise, why work? Why not just have the Fed print every citizen $1M?
> In the meantime, you should stop spewing these dangerous ideas. You sound exactly like the Texas Lt. Governor. And, let me tell you: neither I nor my family are dying for you.
If you or your family are extra vulnerable, I'm afraid you'll have to avoid contact with others until a vaccine is developed. In the meantime, I'm not content with the current solution of "halt the economy/destroy lives/print money indefinitely". I feel the best course of action is to let the disease spread normally with a few extra measures in place to slow it down (social distancing/masks). And it seems a lot of governors agree with me - many states are starting to re-open. In my opinion, covid-19 is not as bad as it seems. Our data is biased because it comes mainly from hospitals while the majority of the cases go unnoticed. Things will return to normal.
Which do you value more: those peoples' lives, or corporate profits?
Obviously economic stability is more valuable than lives to a certain extent because it generates wealth for generations.
I don't think you grasp the gravity of the economic situation. It's not just "corporite profits" being lost. Tens of thousands of people are losing their jobs, businesses, livelihoods, etc, and that number is growing every day. The vast majority of Americans are not software engineers that can work remotely. A paltry $1000 stimulus check isn't going to help the millions of poor feeling the economic pressure. Many will commit suicide before this is over.
Again, I don't give a shit about capitalism. Do you understand that?
If the goal is herd immunity, of course, it's not better. However, that comes with heavy costs and there's no consensus which strategy is best. Likely, the differeing strategies will converge somewhat. We can live fine with a scaled-down, controlled pandemic.
If the choice is saving capitalism or saving 450,000 lives, I choose lives. I don't give a shit about the fortunes of corporate shareholders, landlords, bankers, etc., when nearly 1 in 700 lives are at stake. How about you?
capitalism, hands down. Far more than 450k will die/suffer in the event of complete economic collapse. And yes, capitalism has its thorns, but generally it has brought more wealth and prosperity to people than any other economic model in history.
Now I don't understand what you were replying to. I thought it was "South Korea is anomalous. Has literally any other country been able to replicate their success?" I don't see how it "worked better" answers whether it "replicated S.K.'s success". I'd argue it didn't because it didn't have S.K's problem (having not become a massive issue)
> It's not about closing down or opening up, but proper preparation and responses according to the circumstances. So we can draw ideas from countries that manage better.
Can we learn from Taiwan? Sure, and probably will. But their situation was never what we are facing now.
> If the goal is herd immunity, of course, it's not better. However, that comes with heavy costs and there's no consensus which strategy is best. Likely, the differeing strategies will converge somewhat. We can live fine with a scaled-down, controlled pandemic.
I also agree that this hope for herd immunity is a risky bet. Given it has already mutated at the hook site, I don't think a vaccine or antibodies is going to save us. If we reach herd immunity or develop a vaccine for one strain, then another may spread again like wildfire, just like the flu.