Let's Try Something Completely Different on the COVID conversation

1- Overblown

My fear is that even the very best experts could be wildly off in their predictions & models. The modelling is probably incredibly complex and variable across different climates, cultural behavior, population density, diets, age distribution, housing, transportation, the timing of arrival, and number of hospitals per resident. It could be like a meteorologist trying to predict a snow storm 2 weeks out. They know what they are talking about, but don't really get enough data until right before the storm to have any kind of accuracy in their predictions. Also, like meteorologists, the ones on social media that predict the biggest snow totals always get the most social media sharing.

2- The total number of flu / pneumonia cases & deaths would have to be 10% higher than any other year.

sars-cov2 symptoms seem identical to pneumonia

Look at this study:

Evolving Understanding of the Causes of Pneumonia in Adults, With Special Attention to the Role of Pneumococcus

Daniel M Musher, Michael S Abers, John G Bartlett

Clinical Infectious Diseases, Volume 65, Issue 10, 15 November 2017, Pages 1736–1744,

https://academic.oup.com/cid/article/65/10/1736/4258965

Abstract

Before 1945, Streptococcus pneumoniae caused more than 90% of cases of pneumonia in adults. After 1950, the proportion of pneumonia caused by pneumococcus began to decline. Pneumococcus has continued to decline; at present, this organism is identified in fewer than fewer10%–15% of cases. This proportion is higher in Europe, a finding likely related to differences in vaccination practices and smoking. Gram-negative bacilli, Staphylococcus aureus, Chlamydia, Mycoplasma, and Legionella are each identified in 2%–5% of patients with pneumonia who require hospitalization. Viruses are found in 25% of patients, up to one-third of these have bacterial coinfection. Recent studies fail to identify a causative organism in more than 50% of cases, which remains the most important challenge to understanding lower respiratory infection. Our findings have important implications for antibiotic stewardship and should be considered as new policies for empiric pneumonia management are developed.

Questions for epidemiologists:

- Have we improved our ability to identify causes of pneumonia (study said 50% went unidentified)?

- Why does the cause of pneumonia change from year to year and location to location, but the symptoms stay stay similar?

- Do various viruses and bacteria "compete" for susceptible hosts? Like predators for susceptible prey. Does the gazelle with a broken leg get eaten by hyenas even if all lions are removed.

- What effect has the increase in antibiotic use and influenza vaccine had on the shift in pneumonia causes?

- Do symptoms and immune response reveal more about the patients vulnerability than it does the genetic make up of the infecting agent?

I believe it's both.

It's serious.

It's also blown out of proportion.

They aren't mutually exclusive positions. Most people that die are on their last legs. Let's have an honest debate about that, rather than the two or three under 30s who died out of a million cases.

When the winter was bad in 2018 in the UK, there were an estimated 23,000 deaths. I'm guessing this will be a similar figure. Was this serious ? Absolutely. Did we bother to pay an extra few quid to make sure the old folk had as much heating as possible? Nope, and we didn't keep a graph on it (note, I think we SHOULD have done more, just that we need perspective).

Most (not all, I appreciate), of these folk will die within the next year. They probably will get the virus at some point, or something similar. All deaths are sad, and let's help our health services cope, but let's also not suddenly get a fake sense of caring that suddenly switched off as soon as the virus 'goes' (newsflash, it's never going).

It's simply a matter of what's the threshold we stop 'really' caring and think everything is ok again and forget about folk dying with ventilators that happens all the time (yes, not in this volume).

We absolutely should be prepared for this stuff in future, and stop spending billions of pounds on crap we don't need like nuclear weapons, and spend it on stuff we will need like healthcare.

Educate Yourself wrote:

So what I'm going to ask you to do in this thread is

1) Tell us which side you're on.

2) Tell us what it would take for you to change your mind.

I think it's a poor idea to try and squash polarization by beginning with "tell us which side you're on". I don't have a side. What's a side? Most of the people who have sides are there because their identity politics puts them there, and they'll change if and when their dear leaders change. They're trivial.

People say they believe in following the recommendations of the CDC. I'm actually not sure what the CDC is recommending that goes beyond washing hands, staying home of you're sick, etc etc. Regarding shutting down workplaces, they say this: "Employers should plan to respond in a flexible way to varying levels of disease transmission in the community and be prepared to refine their business response plans as needed". So this notion of shutting down the economy appears to come from individual politicians and not from the CDC. I could be wrong.

Obviously the media has overblown it because that's their job. They went from "Crisis Alert - Lack Of Testing!" to "Crisis Alert - Surge in Cases!" once testing started. That's fine, they're earning a living.

Here's one thing: it's been widely reported that in Hong Kong, health care workers are keeping of 6 feet *for engagements of longer than 15 minutes*. In Singapore it's 30 minutes. They're not seeing spikes in infections in their health care workers. For me, that's enough to feel that a social norm of "Always 6 feet apart always!" is divisive, self-defeating and silly. There's enough stress in everyone's life, without creating a source of a lot of beefs that doesn't actually affect transmission meaningfully.

So that's an example of what would change my mind about something: here's something people are doing, and here's its result. It wouldn't necessarily change my mind to "let's all start doing that right away".

Educate Yourself wrote:

So what I'm going to ask you to do in this thread is

1) Tell us which side you're on.

2) Tell us what it would take for you to change your mind.

Can you dig it?

Your problem is that you are a 1 dimensional thinker.

“The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in mind at the same time and still retain the ability to function.” -F. Scott Fitzgerald

Your blinded by your argumentative nature and refuse to accept the obvious.

I'm on the side of truth. The coronavirus is serious and it's being overblown.

It's about the panic. It's about the "death ticker" on the news. It's about the misleading "(insert number here) new cases today" without reporting the massive increase in people tested that day. It's about scaring the sh!t out of people for one thing, when there is another thing that they are ignoring.

What would it take for me to change my mind that it's being overblown?

I know how the population reacted to the 61,000 flu deaths in 2018. They didn't.

I have no idea how they would have reacted to 61,001. Maybe there would have been panic toilet paper buying, school closures and stay at home orders at 61,001, I don't know; so that's when I will change my mind. My argument washes out when there are at least 61,001 deaths, apparently reaching the holy sh!t, let's panic threshold, that was not there at 61,000 flu deaths.

Now maybe everyone will stop asking the same question that I've answered over and over again.

History will prove I was on the right side of it and unlike so many, I was rooting for a good outcome, rather than rooting for chaos and disaster just to be right.

I think the entire premise of this thread is something of a strawman, as is any comparison of the total number of deaths associated with flu (or auto accidents, guns, you name it) with Covid-19. Just stop!

1) yes it is serious, and yes the media has made a huge deal of it. And maybe bigger than it should. The buying panic was ludicrous, as was the stock market sell off. But what's it going to take? The president tried to downplay it and we lost some precious time in January and February. And the consequences of doing nothing over this past month would be by now (or soon would be) catastrophic. This disease is new, and we don't yet know how to fight it. It is more contagious and severe illness is greater than other common agents (e.g., the flu, where we do have vaccines, although 40-50% effective). It is growing at an exponential rate, and we don't want to overwhelm the medical system--parts of Italy are over the top in that regard and NYC is on the brink, with other cities that may follow (Chicago, Detroit, LA among them).

2) a vaccine; infection rates drop off; better treatment and availability of space, doctors, and supplies including PPE.

I think we'll hit a rolling peak in the next month or two and get back closer to normal over the summer. But if there is not a vaccine by next winter, we'll be going through something like this again by the beginning of next year.

Good post.

The people whom I know in health care are already being overwhelmed, so I tend to suspect the naysayers and "Bro, scientists are lying" posters are mostly either trolls or people who are socially isolated, and really don't know what is going on, or maybe care.

“It's the most dangerous pandemic in our lifetime. . . . If you're not worried, you're not paying attention.”

Dr. Larry Brilliant

https://www.wired.com/story/coronavirus-interview-larry-brilliant-smallpox-epidemiologist/

Data coming out of Iceland is convincing me it's overblown. The only place which appears to be do population wide testing, including no presenting cases.

The data is showing 50% have no symptoms. Majority of the other 50% have mild symptoms. Aligns with diamond princess studies which had 73% being asymptomatic.

I live in Madrid and have had coronavirus. Was bad for me for a day and very lethargic for a week. Very mild for my wife.

https://www.google.com/amp/s/fortune.com/2020/03/27/coronavirus-testing-us-iceland-cdc-trump-decode-covid-19-tests/amp/

https://pubs.rsna.org/doi/10.1148/ryct.2020200110

https://www.covid.is/data

I suggest that you take your own advice and study history.

What happened in the US during the Great Depression is nothing compared to what happened to Germany and Japan during World War II. (Yeah, they fully deserved, right? But that's not the point.) And those experiences in Germany and Japan are nothing compared to what happened to Vietnam for THREE decades fighting France and the US.

No. It was not a blip. But those economies eventually recovered. Even the one in Vietnam.

If you compare it to the bubonic plague, AIDS, or swine flu, then the coronavirus is very small in comparison.

facts and reason wrote:

If you compare it to the bubonic plague, AIDS, or swine flu, then the coronavirus is very small in comparison.

This doesn't make sense - we should compare to all of them at 4 months after the first infection. We don't know how many people covid will end up killing over the next year.

Juice Springsteen wrote:

How about we lose our BS opinions and stop trying to act like amateur epidemiologists?

Right. Forget your job and your freedom and fall into line! Some people are pursueded by that.

The media and governments are over-reacting.

This is not a serious issue.

In 2009, the H1N1 virus had over 700 million cases worldwide and 284,000 deaths.

But nothing shutdown and there was no lockdowns anywhere in the world.

You can read about that here:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2009_flu_pandemic

The COVID-9 worldmeter here:

https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/

Shows 600,000 cases and 28,000 deaths.

Everything is closed in 150 countries.

So why is this happening?

Two words:

Political correctness

People are getting soft and afraid about everything these days.

Gone are the days of the tough people who will handle difficult situations with courage.

Now everyone is a wimp, acting like a baby.

NeverAWMDRF2020 wrote:

The media and governments are over-reacting.

This is not a serious issue.

In 2009, the H1N1 virus had over 700 million cases worldwide and 284,000 deaths.

But nothing shutdown and there was no lockdowns anywhere in the world.

You can read about that here:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2009_flu_pandemic

The COVID-9 worldmeter here:

https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/

Shows 600,000 cases and 28,000 deaths.

Everything is closed in 150 countries.

So why is this happening?

Two words:

Political correctness

People are getting soft and afraid about everything these days.

Gone are the days of the tough people who will handle difficult situations with courage.

Now everyone is a wimp, acting like a baby.

This is exactly what happens when "everyone's a winner."

I'll admit I'm a sceptic and think it's overblown.

Before stating what might change my mind, there is clearly too much deception taking place:

1) As testing increases the media is breathlessly reporting positive cases as though they just happened yesterday - not that the test results came in yesterday. Every person posting on this thread knows that this reporting is misleading. Unfortunately we have no idea how widespread the infections are so mortality rates are unknown.

2) If 1,700 deaths in the US (and 27,000 worldwide) have really crippled our healthcare systems, then we've been lied to for many years about the number of deaths from the flu (yes I'm comparing to the flu!) Why are we not crippled by 30,000 to 50,000 annual flu deaths? Flu has a seasonal curve too so the answer is not that the mortality rate today needs to be annualized - but even if you do that, the deaths would be around the level of the democrat-administration plaque of 2009 when Martial Law wasn't needed - to save lives.

To affirm or change my suspicions I'd need 1) solid information on total infections and the actual mortality rate, and 2) solid information on the increase in total deaths worldwide or in any major country.

Italy had averaged 1,700 deaths per day prior to Covid and now has 700 Covid deaths per day. Has the total number of daily deaths increased to 2,400? or 2,000? or 1,800? Someone knows...

Guy was a 2:42 marathoner before getting hit with this deadly virus.

listen to this guy PLEASE wrote:

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/mar/26/this-really-hurts-man-shares-covid-19-experience-in-video

Guy was a 2:42 marathoner before getting hit with this deadly virus.

That is sad and I wouldn't wish it on anyone - especially my loved ones. But that video doesn't convince me that millions of lost jobs are justified.

Tbh it just sounds like the same symptoms the normal flu, what's the big deal ?

I'm not saying there aren't issues, there are loads on ventilators, but this is just mindless reporting.

Yes let’s run everything based on what it “sounds” like to you lol.