Covid-19 Discussion (moderated)

Was the Spanish flu a severe flu?  Because that killed an awful lot of ppl.  I’m willing to bet Covid will not end up anywhere near as bad as that.

Flu also affects, and kills, children at a much higher rate.

No mask mandates though....no closures.  

Odd.

There’s no flu vaccine either.  Not an effective one.

The virus has been heavily politicized.

Listen you are welcome to literally cower in your home....line your walls with radioactive sheets of lead and wear a hazmat suit.

The rest of us should feel free to go to church, school(like the cdc recommend) and work.

Vulnerable people shelter in place and stay away from those who are healthy and have next to NO chance of dying from this.

COVID is up to 1.4 million deaths worldwide, and that's probably an undercount since some countries don't have the same sort of testing as others: you'd have to look at the excess deaths to get a better idea. Year's not done yet, but COVID is at least twice as deadly as influenza.

Influenza patients also don't fill up hospital ICUs so that they don't have any more capacity. Do folks just think that's not a problem, it's only the vulnerable dying anyway? It's a very Darwinian / survival of the fittest approach, and it always applies to other people rather than themselves.

Hospitalizations mean NOTHING...at least in America.  The hospitals have a BLANK CHECK when someone has Covid and they damn well known it.

They will admit you for damn near any reason because they know the government is going to pay them.

Anyone who thinks differently either doesn’t live in a place like NYC where I’ve seen all of this or is so naive you believe all those reports of damaged roofs after a hurricane are also real.

People will lie when $ is on the line and Covid is an unlimited source of revenue for certain industries:

Exaggeration again: no-one is saying those are the relevant measures that people should be taking. Unfortunately, religious gatherings are at the "super spreader" end of the scale: congregational singing expels droplets into the air in an enclosed space where people gather for at least an hour? Very very bad. Sorry - we're having to do home church here in Australia, and it's a reminder that the church isn't really defined by the buildings or the large gatherings.

Schools only close when it's really bad. Keep them open as long as possible, because the children are less at risk and because their parents may be essential workers. Individual schools may need to close in response to an infection in that particular school.

Same with work: some businesses are actually doing well, but many are not, particularly in hospitality and travel. It's not the businesses per se, but the gatherings (hence gyms and pubs get short shrift), but it's made worse because people won't wear masks: those businesses could stay open longer if people wore masks. Lack of mask wearing is one of the things contributing to the spread of this thing and causing businesses to close.

Yep, I was less speaking to you or Llama and more speaking to everyone else who might be reading this and about to potentially wade in .

So you've been to a NY hospital at the height of COVID? Because there's plenty of video evidence about what it was like, and you seem to be seeing something very different to what the rest of us are seeing. Heck, go up to one now and check it out, and maybe actual reality will interrupt your OAN / Newsmax fake reality.

Here's one I posted ages ago from one of the Australian (not American) Broadcasting Corporation's premier news reporting programs, Foreign Correspondent:

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-04-21/coronavirus-paramedics-doctor-on-the-frontline-new-york-covid-19/12139676?nw=0

OK so let's say for arguments sake Covid is 3 x deadlier than flu. About 1.4 million people have died due to it this year, so let's extrapolate that to 2 million over a 12 month period. This still pales into insignificance statistically. As best can be estimated around 55 million people die each year. 150000 per day. 6250 per hour. 104 per minute. Several hundred people have died whilst I have been typing this - maybe a couple of these deaths were from Covid. 

It's disingenuous to compare Covid and the flu.  The death rate is much higher *even with* the measures being taken around the world.  The "Spanish flu" was a pandemic and can be compared somewhat, but that was a long time ago, and we should be doing a lot better this time around.  We are not.  We're repeating history.  A first wave, followed by a deadlier second wave.  So, the average populace has learned diddly and squat in the past hundred years.  A bunch of you will dismiss the whole thing, until your mother dies or something.  Then suddenly it will matter.

Yes I’m an essential worker and have been in NYC literally six days a week since the pandemic begun.

Its a lot of nonsense.

Fat, old and sick people died from this, and that’s a tragedy, but hospitals will damn near admit anyone for “observation” knowing they will get paid they have a blank check sitting in front of them.

Ive known DOZENS of people who had this I live in the hardest hit place on planet earth and people were getting admitted for damn near anything.  Symptoms that wouldn’t even cause you to miss work.  

They were afraid and the hospitals knew the govt would pay.

And what videos are you talking about?  It’s illegal to video patients in a hospital I don’t think these videos exist.  And if they exist they show people in a hospital with very little context as to how sick they were, if they survived, how long they were in there for etc.

My mother is already dead but if I had one she would be quarantined....it’s ME that doesn’t have to be quarantined.  Or my kids.  The death rate for us is microscopic.

My brother and his entire family had it also.

They're all fine and he has every ore existing condition in the book.  I was actually concerned for him because for people like him it’s a different ballgame.

Meh, they'll get their inheritance anyway, so it probably won't be much concern to them at all.

In case you haven't noticed, there's a worldwide vaccination effort ongoing to mitigate the flu, and it's been going on for decades.

If you want to be cavalier about people's lives, then why should I care about yours?  Hell, everyone on chess.com could die tomorrow and it's no skin off my nose.  Do the 7.5 billion people you are not really aware of and will never come into contact with during your life matter?

If your answer is no, then okay.  But I hope a pandemic that targets human beings without an "empathy gene" comes along and takes you out, just for the karma of it .

The vulnerable should be quarantined and the rest of us should go about our lives.

I mean I’ve been FORCED to do that as an essential worker.

If you are vulnerable, and you self quarantine...how does it affect you one bit if I go to work and my kids go to school?

This is the first tile in recorded history we have quarantined the healthy and if you don’t mind my saying so it’s been highly ineffective.

Something will kill my mother. And also every other human being that ever exists. But I agree, this always happens because fundamentally people don't give a s**t until it directly affects them. 'My daughter was one of the 7 people killed by xyz Latin name incurable disease this year. We are petitioning for more research to be carried out into the causes and diagnosis of this'. And I realise what a c**t that makes me sound like but it's true. Why would you care about something so insignificant unless it has directly affected you? I feel sympathy but not empathy for such cases. If my mother or anyone else close to me contracts Covid and dies of course I will be devastated, but no more so than I would be if it was a Coronary disease or cancer, the 2 most likely causes. 

What sort of essential worker? Because I find it hard to believe that you're actually working in a hospital, seeing the things that happen there, and still have that attitude. There's been video from news reports, but also the video diaries of people who have been working in those hospitals. And yes, lots of people don't have very severe symptoms: unfortunately, they're still able to infect others who may have much more severe reactions - not only death, but long term side effects that are still being studied. That's the whole point and the thing people don't seem to get: this is not just about YOU, it's about US, the other people like the vulnerable. You seem to think we can just lock them all up: out of sight, out of mind, and continue on with our regular lives. The crisis in health care is indication that doesn't work.

The for-profit model dominant in the US is definitely exacerbating the problem, but even places with public health care like the UK and Australia are being challenged by this.

Ummm...the word quarantine, from the 1400s, comes from the practice of quarantining ships offshore for a period of time (sometimes 40 days) to prevent the spread of cholera, etc.  Thus, "quaranta giorni", or 40 days.  So, by definition, the word covers quarantining the healthy as well as the sick for 600 years now.  Try again .

That's because the healthy aren't actually quarantining - that's the problem, if the quarantine has a gap, the virus can get through and render the rest of the hard work moot. It's what happened in Melbourne - like the rest of Australia, they thought their lock down got it under control, but using inadequately trained private security at the quarantine hotels, COVID got out and into the community and they had a massive outbreak and it took a second, more extended lock down to get it back under control again. It was a good reminder for the rest of our country that we couldn't take this lightly, or it WILL get away from you again.

In other countries the second wave has come through a different sector of the population - I think it was migrant workers in Singapore?