Hard to swallow truths about Covid-19 - We need to let it run its course

JustAnotherHoax wrote:

Letsrun full of IDIOTs

Let's put this in perspective: Heart disease is the number one killer worldwide - it killed 3.5 million people in 2019. In italy, about 100000 and 175000 died of heart disease and cancer, respectively, in 2019 - or about 750 deaths per day combined.

Today, 793 people died from covid-19 in Italy. So we now know that per day, more people in Italy are dying from covid than from heart disease and ALL cancers combined.

Even if all that is true, it will not last long. The virus will run through the population and then abate, and again sink below heart disease and cancer.

We should always let diseases that kill people "run their course". AIDS, Ebola, bubonic plague - let them cull the weak. So long as it isn't us.

Social distancing or shelter-in-place might slow the spread, but won't stop the spread. We certainly can't go on this way indefinitely. We might have "life", but certainly not any "quality of life". Create billions doses of the potentially effective drugs, give everyone a 30 day supply, and let everyone get on with their lives. At the rate we are going, the only thing left will be everyone grow their own food for survival. As Bloomberg said, just dig a hole, drop in a seed, cover it up, add water, how hard can it be.

I think this is the right approach.

The OP’s take is wrong. It seems logical, but the idea that this thing will “run its course” is very possibly not what will happen.

We can clean this up with minimal economic damage if we take immediate aggressive action. The article below lays it out very clearly with lots of evidence. I know reading is hard for lots of you, especially those who have already decided the know everything and don’t need to consider any other evidence, but if you agree with the OP please please please please read this and think hard about it.

https://medium.com/@tomaspueyo/coronavirus-the-hammer-and-the-dance-be9337092b56

roscoe. wrote:

https://order-order.com/2020/03/22/israels-social-isolation-herd-immunity-strategy/#comments

I think this is the right approach.

What?

Shoot Palestinians?

Locking down people doesn't work - the Executive Director of W.H.O even said so:

https://www.thestar.com.my/news/world/2020/03/22/lockdowns-not-enough-to-defeat-coronavirus---who039s-ryan

"Countries can't simply lock down their societies to defeat coronavirus, the World Health Organization's top emergency expert said on Sunday, adding that public health measures are needed to avoid a resurgence of the virus later on."

Smismard wrote:

So what's the best course of action? Just get back to normal and take our deaths?

At this rate, with the way we're f@cking up the economy, the amount of people dying from starvation will far outweigh deaths from coronavirus. What we're doing isn't sustainable.

I bet countries that clamped down hard and soon, did aggressive testing and quarantine, like S Korea, Japan, Hong Kong and Singapore are going to take MUCH less of a knock at the end of this, than any trying for herd immunity.

Japanese model is the way to go wrote:

Locking down people doesn't work - the Executive Director of W.H.O even said so:

https://www.thestar.com.my/news/world/2020/03/22/lockdowns-not-enough-to-defeat-coronavirus---who039s-ryan

"Countries can't simply lock down their societies to defeat coronavirus, the World Health Organization's top emergency expert said on Sunday, adding that public health measures are needed to avoid a resurgence of the virus later on."

One way out is to get the cost of testing way down and the ease of doing it way up. If you could test the entire globe for Covid-19 right now, we could quarantine all those people and this would all be over with in a month. But we can't do that cause testing capacity is limited. It's not convenient enough (drive thru test are the way to go). It takes too long to get results (hours? It should take a few minutes ideally).

And we are getting there on that front. Countries like SK that have managed to do the most testing have had the best results - without massive quarantines. This takes time to ramp up.

uriet wrote:

JustAnotherHoax wrote:

Letsrun full of IDIOTs

Let's put this in perspective: Heart disease is the number one killer worldwide - it killed 3.5 million people in 2019. In italy, about 100000 and 175000 died of heart disease and cancer, respectively, in 2019 - or about 750 deaths per day combined.

Today, 793 people died from covid-19 in Italy. So we now know that per day, more people in Italy are dying from covid than from heart disease and ALL cancers combined.

Even if all that is true, it will not last long. The virus will run through the population and then abate, and again sink below heart disease and cancer.

What do you mean if? Unless you dont believe in simple math and statistics or can provide numbers that go against my arguments then what I wrote is a basic FACT.

Imagine without the lockdowns italy would be experiencing thousands and thousands of deaths per day - remember, most of the virus is still confined to just the northern region while cancer and heart disease are everywhere.

Extrapolate this situation out to the rest of the world and it's quite easy to see that potentially hundreds of millions would die if this virus were left to it's own devices. At that point this would probably become a seasonal virus with different mutations, strains, etc and vaccinating against it would be near impossible.

What if it mutates and the fatality rate goes from 13% (I'm looking at number of deaths/number of resolved cases (number of deaths+number recovered)) to 25%?

This is essentially world war.

NewNormal wrote:

Social distancing or shelter-in-place might slow the spread, but won't stop the spread. We certainly can't go on this way indefinitely. We might have "life", but certainly not any "quality of life". Create billions doses of the potentially effective drugs, give everyone a 30 day supply, and let everyone get on with their lives. At the rate we are going, the only thing left will be everyone grow their own food for survival. As Bloomberg said, just dig a hole, drop in a seed, cover it up, add water, how hard can it be.

Again, THE ENTIRE POINT OF THESE MEASURES ARE TO SLOW THE VIRUS. This prevents overtaxing of our healthcare system. No one is proposing that these measures are going to stop the virus. It looks like that even with distancing/etc, most of us will eventually get this virus. It's just a lot better if we all gradually get it than everyone becoming infected in a month or two period. And there are no "potentially effective drugs", that's why this is such a pandemic.

+1

Good article. Thanks for posting.

Our death rate doesn’t even look like the same virus as Italy. Ours in more in line with Germany and South Korea. Even China had a significantly lower mortality rate than Italy. Right now Italy is the outlier and their data is skewing the mortality rate.

Now that we are actually testing in the US, we’re at almost 40,000 cases and 395 deaths (as of 3 minutes ago). For contrast, Italy has about 55,000 cases and over 5000 deaths.

I think when all is said and done, this virus will end up being *slightly* worse than the seasonal flu. Whether that is worth crushing the entire global economy for remains to be seen. I certainly don’t want to see my elderly loved ones catch the virus. But I also don’t want to see my small business owner friends lose their business and ability to provide for their young families.

It takes about six to eight weeks to die from the virus after being infected which is why our numbers are lagging behind. China has a death rate now over 4%. It's funny that you say that italy is the outlier and then point to Germany, another outlier, to compare outcomes against the US. China, spain, italy, France, uk... the death rate is globally 4%+ now and the case fatality rate is hovering around 13%. South Korea the death rate is well over 1% right now and you've seen that number creep up because deaths LAG behind infection numbers... you dont get it and die instantly, it can take up to eight weeks. In South Korea their infected population also skews younger.

Why cant you idiots read the data for yourself? In what world is 13000/110000 less than .01?

Flu idiots destroyed AGAIN. Out of three million flu cases in Italy this past year, only 240 have died. Thats 240/3000000 - about .008%

FLU IDIOTS get destroyed by Italy - with 800 deaths yesterday in Italy, coronavirus killed FOUR TIMES AS MANY PEOPLE IN A DAY as the FLU KILLS IN A YEAR

I misstated that. US was at 30,000 cases then, not 40,000.

Your point about the lag between diagnosis and outcome (death or recovery) is fair. However we also don’t know how many of these people recently tested have been sick for 3 weeks already and unable to get a test. They may be on the upswing to recovery. Not to mention the thousands of people who will have symptoms so mild they never even pursue a test. Most of those being tested are the sickest. That will skew the Death Stats too.

No doubt this is deadlier the flu, but I don’t think it’s as bad as the current data indicates because of all the mild cases that won’t be tested

It's certainly fair to say that the death rate is artificially high because of a low denominator of diagnosed cases rooted in a lack of adequate testing infrastructure - I just don't think that denominator is as big as people want to believe.

If the death rate were as low as people would like to believe then there would already be a million cases in the United States. 112 people died of corona today in the USA already - more than the flu, and there are only ~40,000 confirmed cases of corona vs the multiple tens of millions of flu cases we've seen this year. Do you really think that we've seen tens of millions of coronavirus cases in the USA?!?! I could understand saying maybe the number is as high as 100k, but 50M? I mean, this is basically your argument, right?