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Any and all updates regarding the COVID-19 will need a source provided. Please do your part in helping us to keep this thread maintainable and under control. It is YOUR responsibility to fully read through the sources that you link, and you MUST provide a brief summary explaining what the source is about. Do not expect other people to do the work for you. Conspiracy theories and fear mongering will absolutely not be tolerated in this thread. Expect harsh mod actions if you try to incite fear needlessly. This is not a politics thread! You are allowed to post information regarding politics if it's related to the coronavirus, but do NOT discuss politics in here. Added a disclaimer on page 662. Many need to post better. | ||
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RKC
2848 Posts
I was referring more to a stable situation where infections have plateaued and society has reopened. The idea of testing is to identify and isolate carriers (and prevent clusters). Also, soft mandates on testing puts people perpetually on 'guard' and shape more responsible behaviour (whereas vaccination operates more like a free one-time pass and leads to complacency). Anyway, just a hypothetical thought. Most societies aren't at this safe zone yet. | ||
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Zambrah
United States7224 Posts
Spanish Flu was comparatively more lethal, by about three times, but COVID isnt done in the US, and weve also made great medical strides since then, so who knows how it stacks up given all of this. Still, what a milestone. https://www.npr.org/sections/coronavirus-live-updates/2021/09/20/1039071274/covid-19-deaths-1918-19-flu-pandemic?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=twitter | ||
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BlackJack
United States10365 Posts
On September 21 2021 02:09 Jek wrote: That's what I literally said. They are there but the vacinne's frequency of dangerous side effects is so many times less frequent it doesn't make sense to call to arms about it. Consider how effective treatment is against it, if people just care to actually pay attention it's not an issue at all compared to 99.99999% of all medicine out there. I take Lamictal for a mood disorder, from the box's list of side effects: 1 out of 1000 need to seek immediate medical assistance or enjoy risking that their skin die and literally fall off leading to an agonizing death - if they are lucky it might just be organ failure instead. Why do I dare to take it? Because you can treat side effects at a hospital and the alternative to not taking it is living a miserable life. Granted Lamictal is black box medicine. You will still find the vast majority of medicines to be magnitudes of a factor ten (at least) more dangerous than the vaccine and we use that without anyone caring, because side effects are rare and in nearly all cases treatable. Basically If you want to create to create a fuzz about the vaccine's side effect being an issue, you might as well bark up about all other medicines people take on a daily basis. I honestly wouldn't be surprised if more people died on a yearly basis from eating shellfish. Sounds like you are talking about Stevens-Johnson Syndrome which is a rare but serious side effect of certain medications affecting 1 to 2 per million people each year. I'm glad serious but rare side effects have to be disclosed. and just to clarify I'm not saying to "sound the alarms" as you say. I'm simply saying don't tell people there is no risk. | ||
Liquid`Drone
Norway28620 Posts
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Amumoman
153 Posts
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JimmiC
Canada22817 Posts
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RKC
2848 Posts
Really, here and now, what's the point of comparing? Leave this to the scientists once the pandemic is over (which probably takes another 5-10 years of research and peer review). | ||
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Liquid`Drone
Norway28620 Posts
We also already addresses the demographic issue, the Spanish flu was flat out more dangerous for 25 year olds than it was for 70 year olds, that is not related to there being more old people in the world today. | ||
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Magic Powers
Austria3765 Posts
On September 21 2021 17:07 Slydie wrote: I was also on the "more testing is better" train at first, but then I realized how it turned out in practice. Denmark was the most extreme, and at one point, they had done around 10x the tests per capita as other European countries. Workers and students were ALL tested twice a week. There are 3 problems. The first is deminishing returns; random tests is an extremely inefficient way to track down the virus. It is like finding a plumber by asking random ppl in the street if they know plumbing. As the Danes figured out, you can't test your way out of the pandemic either, as it does not cure you nor stop the spread by itself. On top of that, there are false positives and negatives. Once the worst case scenario is less dramatic than a normal flu season I think the logical thing is to GET BACK TO NORMAL. One example: the UK had around 1k people die per week in the recent wave, but a flu season can peak at over 5k. The UK could have waited a bit to get even more vaccinated, but I find their strategy perfectly reasonable. I would disagree with that point for a few reasons. Mainly it depends on the context. In the context of New Zealand: they tested their way out of another huge wave. As a result they've ended the outbreak extremely quickly and things are now back under control. The alert level is 3 only in Auckland and 2 in the rest of NZ. Level 4 was not required. Compare that to Australia where they simply gave up, and the wave is still going. The difference is absurd. Australia had a chance to prevent this. So maybe for a country the size of the United States, alright. I can see the argument why more testing isn't necessarily always better. But within each state they can follow certain testing protocols that would make sense and that can be used to alert greater regions and reduce the severity of a spread. Testing is especially important wherever pockets/groups of people meet. Furthermore, a positive antigen test can be followed up by a PCR test. If that one's also positive, seems good enough to me. I have a PCR test at home for such a case. | ||
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JimmiC
Canada22817 Posts
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Slydie
1913 Posts
On September 21 2021 20:34 Amumoman wrote: It’s been a week since all the last restrictions were lifted by the regime here in denmark; it’s fascinating how much the general atmosphere has shifted — of course before this, it was just the neuroticly and anxiously inclined who were worried but now even these people seem to be less angsty because they’ve been given permission by their precious ‘authorities’ to relax. In Spain, many restrictions are nowhere close to being lifted, but I hope that will be the case when it finally happens. I am not quite sure, though. Spain got severely traumatized during the first wave and confinement, and it seems like a lot of people WANT to be worried and keep using their masks "just in case". One problem is that mask mandates including outdoors were introduced for moral and political reasons when there was almost no virus, and it really made no sense. It feels like the population and politicians alike prefer to stay in the illusion that they are important and effective. Sigh. | ||
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JimmiC
Canada22817 Posts
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Liquid`Drone
Norway28620 Posts
On September 21 2021 22:50 JimmiC wrote: Not true, I'm not going to rehash it but that is your confirmation bias talking, plus modern medicine. It is far from a slam dunk. Also to the top part depends on how you define devastating. Wait for the entire economic cost, and human cost of this one before you make that claim. The % of human life might even end up worse when the excess death calculations are completed. edit: to be clear I'm not arguing that covid is worse than the Spanish flu, I'm arguing that the answer is not clear and when this is done (hopefully it is at some point) many people will compare and likely come to different conclusions depending on their criteria. ![[image loading]](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/70/W_curve.png) This is the 'Difference between the influenza mortality age-distributions of the 1918 epidemic and normal epidemics – deaths per 100,000 persons in each age group, United States, for the interpandemic years 1911–1917 (dashed line) and the pandemic year 1918 (solid line)'. You can see that there are more deaths per 100000 for 25 year olds than there are for 70 year olds in 1918 (about 1000 per 100k for 25 year olds, about 700 per 100k for 70 year olds.) Compare with the regular influenzas between 1911 and 1917, where the figure is the same (about 700 per 100k for 70 year olds) but what looks like less than 50 per 100k for 25 year olds. A big part of what made the Spanish flu so devastating was just this - that it targeted the young and healthy to a far greater degree than what regular influenza did. It was no more deadly for old people than the regular flu was, but vastly more deadly for people aged 15-40. If 1% of 25 year olds die (and a majority of them are seriously ill), then this causes a lot more damage to society than if 1% of 80 year olds die. I don't mean to be cynical about human life, but I don't really expect to have to argue this point. Looking at the chart of covid and comparing it with these, you can even remove the segments where the mortality is really high between the ages 0- ~4. It might be that Covid ends up being comparable in terms of total world wide death toll. Not in 'hardship for society'. That's not me underestimating how bad Covid has been around the world, it's a question of understanding how bad the Spanish flu was. | ||
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JimmiC
Canada22817 Posts
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Acrofales
Spain17950 Posts
On September 21 2021 23:34 JimmiC wrote: I've seen this and tons more, like I said I'm not rehashing it because this pandemic is far from over and we are measuring in two completely different eras and with two completely different ways of tracking deaths. If you are comparing confirmed deaths it is in the 1000' s and way less then Covid in both totals and %. Or arguing that cancer is way deadlier now than it was back then. It will still be a pretty silly discussion when this is done because of the era difference it is especially silly and dangerous now because there is a TON of people who use that the Spanish flu was "worse" to dismiss everything we are doing to try to make that true. I was going to say you're arguing for the sake of arguing, but Drone opened this can of worms, so eh. Covid so far killed more people in absolute numbers than the Spanish Flu did. Spanish Flu killed (considerably) more people as a % of the world population than Covid has so far. Those are facts. I'll grant Drone another one that Spanish Flu was deadlier to young people, both as a % of the population at the time and as a % of patients of Spanish Flu, than Covid has been (so far). Other than that, who the hell cares what disease is worse. Covid is pretty fucking awful. | ||
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JimmiC
Canada22817 Posts
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RKC
2848 Posts
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Slydie
1913 Posts
On September 21 2021 23:02 JimmiC wrote: We had that joyous feeling this summer. With our premier declaring no restrictions ever, no passport, he swore to god, we were open and not going back. Everyone lived like normal, it was great. Now we are back in a state of emergency, mr no more restrictions and passport has instituted both. All no life threatening surgeries have been canceled. We have begun negotiations with other provinces about taking some of our patients, we are talking to the military about sending medical help. Going a little slow is probably the right move based on what has happened here and other places who went full open. On masks, outdoor seems silly but indoors the science is clear they are effective. I won bring up another mask discussion, but it is puzzling how large crowds are now beginning to gather without distancing nor masks, and no doomsday follows. I believe those months matter a lot. Up to 80% are vaccinated in certain provinces here, and the large majority of remainders are small kids for which the virus is barely a threat. If there is even the slightest risk of hospital overload at this point, the whole vaccination strategy must be called a spectacular failure. As Denmark has realized, the danger is now OVER. Norway is about to follow suit. | ||
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Dingodile
4133 Posts
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Liquid`Drone
Norway28620 Posts
On September 21 2021 23:34 JimmiC wrote: I've seen this and tons more, like I said I'm not rehashing it because this pandemic is far from over and we are measuring in two completely different eras and with two completely different ways of tracking deaths. If you are comparing confirmed deaths it is in the 1000' s and way less then Covid in both totals and %. Or arguing that cancer is way deadlier now than it was back then. It will still be a pretty silly discussion when this is done because of the era difference it is especially silly and dangerous now because there is a TON of people who use that the Spanish flu was "worse" to dismiss everything we are doing to try to make that true. See, that latter paragraph is the thing. I feel like you are dismissing 'the spanish flu was worse than covid' because you're used to it being a justification of not sufficiently dealing with covid. I'm not making the comparison with any type of agenda at all, I'm just stating, as a historical fact, that the spanish flu was (considerably) more devastating for the world than what Covid has been (so far, but I am fairly confident, also than what it will end up being, although I could see Covid total death counts surpass those of the Spanish flu. ) | ||
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