Coronavirus

Harvey wrote

Sweden is doing exactly that. 3x more deaths than Norway or Finland (still "only" 1500).

They aren't really proceeding as normal, though:
https://www.euronews.com/2020/04/17/coronavirus-in-sweden-it-s-a-myth-that-life-is-going-on-as-normal-says-swedish-government

So far, Sweden has banned gatherings larger than 50 people, closed high-schools and universities, and urged those over 70, or otherwise at greater risk from the virus, to self-isolate

The US accepts 40,000 to 70,000 deaths a year from influenzas.  The reality is you can’t save everybody and still have a fully functioning society, or so it would seem.  

The Asian Flu pandemic of 1957 killed as many as 116,000 people in the US before the crisis period ended in May 1958.

Granted, 40,000 people have died in the first month of CV-19, but the rate of infections and death seems to be slowing.  While SARS-Cov-2 is unprecedented in our lifetime, such a pandemic is not entirely unprecedented.

It’s easy to bullshit on the internet and play hypothetical, but turn the question around....exactly how few people will you allow to be sacrificed for us to move beyond this crisis?  Anyone in your family?

Ok not normal. But IMO much closer to the normal end of the scale. The goal is herd immunity.

JTG4eva! wrote

It’s easy to bullshit on the internet and play hypothetical, but turn the question around....exactly how few people will you allow to be sacrificed for us to move beyond this crisis?  Anyone in your family?

I have a family member that appears to be dying of Coronavirus right now. None of us are able to visit her. Thank you for asking, I guess.

I think the continued (high) risk of people dying is more important than "moving beyond the crisis", whatever that means to you.

Stop the presses!  Is someone saying they might not like having something they said, that may or may not be relevant, perhaps from a previous part of a discussion at another time, dug up and thrown in their face?  Am I the only one who sees the irony in that?

Harvey wrote

Ok not normal. But IMO much closer to the normal end of the scale. The goal is herd immunity.

Can you achieve herd immunity if you are suggesting isolation for people 70+?

(I don't know. I'm asking)

A graph!!!!!! Sweet

I have no idea MC. Maybe?

Sorry about your family member.

The numbers that compare annual flu deaths to Covid are kind of BS in my opinion.  This month or last week or yesterday might be more legit. Or wait until the end of the year.

Harvey wrote

I have no idea MC. Maybe?

Sorry about your family member.

The numbers that compare annual flu deaths to Covid are kind of BS in my opinion.  This month or last week or yesterday might be more legit. Or wait until the end of the year.

The point is, when people say: 40,000 - 60,000 people die from the flu every year, that period ends in August (from what I have read). We have had that many deaths in what? A month? In addition to the baseline flu deaths?

Mostly it's me saying that I don't think we should minimize this because it's obviously a different situation.

MC2 5678F589 wrote

I have a family member that appears to be dying of Coronavirus right now. None of us are able to visit her.

That sucks, I am truly sorry for you and your family.

As to the “how many will YOU  accept” game of hypotheticals, unless one thinks this thing will truly be eradicated, us laymen arguing over an arbitrary number seems kind of pointless.  History tells us we will pick a point at which to move forward, and that is likely to come with the acceptance of a certain level of annual deaths.  Is that not something you accept?

I'm saying it's not hypothetical and real lives are being lost. Like my grandmother's (it would appear. She has stopped eating and they removed the feeding tube)

Not sure what else you want me to say.

You want to keep arguing?

MC2 5678F589 wrote

Harvey wrote

Ok not normal. But IMO much closer to the normal end of the scale. The goal is herd immunity.

Can you achieve herd immunity if you are suggesting isolation for people 70+?

(I don't know. I'm asking)

Yes
Obviously a layman’s understanding but since we don’t have any actual virologists, I might as well try. The idea, as I understand it, is that when you get enough people who are immune, the virus loses its ability to travel around the population as freely as it has during this first wave. If my wife, my in-laws and my children all have some level of immunity we can interact with my father in law and my parents without worrying about infecting them. Ditto for my parents’ home health aides. Herd immunity doesn’t mean that everybody is individually immune, just that enough people are that we break down the virus’s ability to roam freely amongst the population. This is why having a few anti-vaxxers around doesn’t hurt anybody but having lots of them leads to measles outbreaks. If it’s just one or two families, they get away with being free- riders because the rest of us got our vaccines but once there are enough in a particular community (like mine unfortunately) measles (or polio or smallpox) has a clear path back in. So we either need to vaccinate everybody (almost everybody) or else develop the immunity naturally through exposure.

MC sorry for your family’s loss.  Every death is a one too many though we have to keep things in perspective.  If we don’t get people access to normal non Covid health care again people are going to dying of all kinds of other things that are totally preventable

The goal of the pause from day 1 was to flatten the curve.  It never was a end all solution.  A vaccine, herd immunity and better therapeutics for those that get infected all along was the plan.  I’ve se3n the figure that 25 % to half the world get this eventually.  The key is getting it slowly enough to be treated.  

MC2 5678F589 wrote

I have a family member that appears to be dying of Coronavirus right now. None of us are able to visit her. Thank you for asking, I guess.

I think the continued (high) risk of people dying is more important than "moving beyond the crisis", whatever that means to you.

Man, I’m sorry to hear that. I wrote the above before seeing this. I hope it didn’t come off as uncaring. I hope it turns in the right direction for your family

MC2 5678F589 wrote

I'm saying it's not hypothetical and real lives are being lost. Like my grandmother's (it would appear. She has stopped eating and they removed the feeding tube)

Sorry bro

++++++Vibes+++++++

Harvey wrote

The numbers that compare annual flu deaths to Covid are kind of BS in my opinion.

As a point comparison perhaps, but in historical context?  And I agree, SARS-CoV-2 is different from previous pandemics, as I’ve been saying from the beginning.  Sure, once we have some immunity and a vaccine perhaps more people still die per year from SARS-CoV-2 than other illnesses during upcoming cold/flu/covid seasons (if we don’t eradicate).  While 40,000 died in the first month of this particular pandemic (as I pointed out), does anyone think that the death rate will stay at 40,000 per month?  I’d bet dollars to donuts that a fair amount of the (upwards of) 116,000 deaths during the first eight months of the Asian Flu were front loaded, although I haven’t dug the numbers out yet.  

So this illness IS different, but history (from several pandemics in the past) indicates the resolution and return to something that approximates the pre-pandemic World....probably not so much.  My point being, history tells us that some number of people are likely to die annually from illnesses that present as a pandemic.  CV-19 will, likely, be no different.

Harder to accept when the illness and death hits home, sorry it has for you.

I didn’t realize we were arguing.  Does all discussion end when this illness becomes personal for any of us?

JTG4eva! wrote

.  Does all discussion end when this illness becomes personal for any of us?

No. I just wasn't feeling like I was in the mood to answer this:

JTG4eva! wrote

As to the “how many will YOU  accept” game of hypotheticals, unless one thinks this thing will truly be eradicated, us laymen arguing over an arbitrary number seems kind of pointless.  History tells us we will pick a point at which to move forward, and that is likely to come with the acceptance of a certain level of annual deaths.  Is that not something you accept?

Fair enough.  It’s got to be hard to talk about this in the same way once the illness has a face.  Hope things improve, or your g’ma and fam find some peace.

Brownski wrote

 So we either need to vaccinate everybody (almost everybody) or else develop the immunity naturally through exposure.

So this assumes that we can develop immunity naturally through exposure. Do we know that we can yet? Has that been proven?