i think this is why people who say "let people just take thier chances" dont really understand what they are in for... its more than just death-rate vs survival-rate...
You could, except that group is a strawman that doesn't exist. No one "wants to shut everything down". Everyone wants to go back to normal, the question is how quickly. Most of the people you're arguing about think that lockdowns along the lines of what were seen in east asia would have been ideal. Taiwan and South Korea seem to have this contained now. Germany is very close. These countries are getting back to normal with very low death tolls as we speak. They certainly didn't "shut everything down".
The US is way behind, largely because its lockdowns haven't been well-heeded by people who think they constitute "shutting everything down". But we're not that far behind that the lockdowns have failed, either. Stay home. We're beating this.
> Taiwan and South Korea seem to have this contained now. Germany is very close. These countries are getting back to normal with very low death tolls as we speak. They certainly didn't "shut everything down".
The death rates in these countries also peaked about two weeks into lockdown, way too soon for lockdown to have had any impact. The death rates are also following a similar bell curve across the world, seemingly independent of any lockdown policy.
The countries that have done well implemented test and trace early, and got people who had tested positive with COVID well out the way of anyone else in hospital wards.
> The death rates are also following a similar bell curve across the world, seemingly independent of any lockdown policy.
I don't know what you mean, except that they go up exponentially and then they go down exponentially and so that's a "bell" curve[1]. The important metric isn't the shape of the thing, it's the size. And the sizes of these curves very widely between nations, tracking lockdown agility and adherence surprisingly well.
[1] That observation is, frankly, pretty trivial. Outbreaks grow with some probability from every individual case, so the derivative is proportional to the value of the function, always. They must have an exponential shape on both sides. That's just math.
> The death rates in these countries also peaked about two weeks into lockdown, way too soon for lockdown to have had any impact.
On the contrary, that's exactly what you'd see if lockdown had maximum effect.
Suppose lockdown were totally effective, such that nobody contracted a new infection of the disease after policies become effective. In that best-case situation, the medical system would still have to deal with everyone who contracted the illness up to this point.
Because the virus spreads exponentially, the curve of "newly-contracted infections" would come to a peak just before lockdown and then fall to zero afterwards. Those cases would then go through their normal progression, and some would die -- about two weeks after contracting the illness.
This single observation isn't enough to conclude that lockdown is effective since it doesn't rule out other possibilities for a declining death rate (medical treatments, bad reporting, etc), but it's certainly not evidence against the efficacy of lockdown policies.
> The death rates are also following a similar bell curve across the world, seemingly independent of any lockdown policy.
A "bell curve" for disease progression implies a typical logistic curve for the number of total cases. That in turn implies that the community is nearing a 'herd immunity' level.
No nation in the world has anywhere near 'herd immunity' yet. With the highly-transmissible nature of nCoV, more than half of a population would need to be infected to confer herd immunity.
> The countries that have done well implemented test and trace early,
The problem here is that you can't implement test and trace late. Public health officials have a finite contact-tracing capability. One community transmission exceeds this threshold, the only tool left is lockdown -- specifically to reduce transmission down to the point where tracing is again possible.
This is fear mongering at best. Anyone who has had a major injury or has been majorly effected by a disease such as pneumonia knows that it takes years to recover. It's only on TV a person receives an injury or is struck with a disease and the next weeks episode is as strong and healthy as in the previous episodes. It takes a long time to recover to full health, if ever. So of course people who have been hit hard by COVID-19 are going to take a long time to recover to their original state of health, if ever. However, until 70% to 80% of us have had the disease, or an effective vaccine is created, people are going to continue to get this disease. Hiding in our homes in fear...
And also chronic Kidney Damage from what I recall - you might recover and be faced with long term management of decline and eventually dialysis and transplant.
Have you read the side effects of prescription drugs? It's scary also. If 24/7 coverage and articles like this existed for car accidents, prescription drugs, surgeries, cancer, etc. we would have to shut down life as we know it.
Prescription drugs are legitimately scary though. As are cars and surgeries.
I'd argue that too many people are numb to these risks. Popping a pill should be seen as scary. Driving two blocks down is making a life/death risk calculation. Sure some people will take that risk every day, dozen of times a day, without nothing happening.
But we should still acknowledge there is a risk, and I'd argue it should be reduced to whatever level makes sense for the situation and not shrug it away as "it's just life"
PS: this is mostly a reaction to "we would have to shut down life as we know it".
My point "life as we know it" shouldn't be the status quo.
No, it shouldn't be scary to take a pill or drive to work. It should be well thought of, but once you decided, there should be no fear, otherwise you will really have a high chance of accident/sickness, as constant fear raises your stress level till the point of mental and physical breakdown.
I think you see fear as paralysing and handicapping while I see it as a safeguard against complacency and carelessness. It's a spectrum, we could agree there can be healthy amounts.
While I get you point about mental and physical breakdown, paracetamol overdose [0] for instance is a fairly common thing. Too many people see it at the same level as coffee or a redbull, when it's something else altogether. Same for people abusing antibiotics, whith far reaching consequences going way beyond a single person's stress level.
For driving, sure too much fear depletes mental resources. But currently we are around 1.3 billion people just for the death count each year, and the majority of accidents occur on short daily trips on well know roads, from lack of focus and stress.
Seems quite scare mongering. Less lung function is not a big deal at all in my experience, especially at these levels. Same is true of pneumonia, most people will hardly notice anything serious. Very little evidence of other health issues. And this only looks like effects from those suffering serious symptoms whereas it seems like at least 90%+ of infected are asymptotic anyways.
That's what I'm saying. (Probably going to get downvoted to smithereens) but how can COVID-19 _which is of the same nature of thousands of other known corona viruses_ be so diabolically different than the ones we know about?
I'd bet all these worst-case symptoms are _also_ present in those hit badly by the flu or other corona viruses.
Indeed, after some googling, same is true for H1N1:
The difference is one of scale - out of people infected with seasonal flu, very few are hit really badly by it. As Covid is creating more of the severe cases than flu (despite having infected - yet - much less people than flu), the qualitatively similar effect is much more important simply because it will be affecting potentially much more peope depending on how the world handling of Covid turns out.
China needs to be held accountable for covering up the origin of this virus, withholding useful information from scientists in other nations, looting ppe from other countries, and working with the WHO to downplay the seriousness of this virus as it spread outside of their boarders.
There is no data here and nothing to really talk about. This type of thing 100% needs actual trials, papers and time before being an issue.
(1) The sample of people who went to hospital are presumably already more susceptible to lung disease than the normal population.
(2) This doesn't include a comparison to the existing flu and other existing diseases. Maybe some percent of ordinary flu cause long term symptoms and they just don't get picked up. A surprising number of people will be quietly nursing chronic conditions and not talking about them.
(3) How many people are we talking here? Need to see some %. There are people who die of flesh eating bacteria; world is a scary place. If it only affects a small number of people it isn't that important.
I read those articles (there are lots of them) as "please take corona still serious, even if you are young".
So not really journalism, but agenda/propaganda. Maybe not the worst agenda and much better than: " we have to accept total surveillance to get back to "normal", but still not really journalism.
30 comments
[ 3.5 ms ] story [ 52.0 ms ] thread• Lung scarring
• Stroke, embolisms, and blood clotting
• Heart damage
• Neurocognitive and mental health impacts
• Childhood inflammation, male infertility, and other possible lasting effects
https://www.vox.com/2020/5/8/21251899/coronavirus-long-term-...
The US is way behind, largely because its lockdowns haven't been well-heeded by people who think they constitute "shutting everything down". But we're not that far behind that the lockdowns have failed, either. Stay home. We're beating this.
The death rates in these countries also peaked about two weeks into lockdown, way too soon for lockdown to have had any impact. The death rates are also following a similar bell curve across the world, seemingly independent of any lockdown policy.
The countries that have done well implemented test and trace early, and got people who had tested positive with COVID well out the way of anyone else in hospital wards.
I don't know what you mean, except that they go up exponentially and then they go down exponentially and so that's a "bell" curve[1]. The important metric isn't the shape of the thing, it's the size. And the sizes of these curves very widely between nations, tracking lockdown agility and adherence surprisingly well.
[1] That observation is, frankly, pretty trivial. Outbreaks grow with some probability from every individual case, so the derivative is proportional to the value of the function, always. They must have an exponential shape on both sides. That's just math.
On the contrary, that's exactly what you'd see if lockdown had maximum effect.
Suppose lockdown were totally effective, such that nobody contracted a new infection of the disease after policies become effective. In that best-case situation, the medical system would still have to deal with everyone who contracted the illness up to this point.
Because the virus spreads exponentially, the curve of "newly-contracted infections" would come to a peak just before lockdown and then fall to zero afterwards. Those cases would then go through their normal progression, and some would die -- about two weeks after contracting the illness.
This single observation isn't enough to conclude that lockdown is effective since it doesn't rule out other possibilities for a declining death rate (medical treatments, bad reporting, etc), but it's certainly not evidence against the efficacy of lockdown policies.
> The death rates are also following a similar bell curve across the world, seemingly independent of any lockdown policy.
A "bell curve" for disease progression implies a typical logistic curve for the number of total cases. That in turn implies that the community is nearing a 'herd immunity' level.
No nation in the world has anywhere near 'herd immunity' yet. With the highly-transmissible nature of nCoV, more than half of a population would need to be infected to confer herd immunity.
> The countries that have done well implemented test and trace early,
The problem here is that you can't implement test and trace late. Public health officials have a finite contact-tracing capability. One community transmission exceeds this threshold, the only tool left is lockdown -- specifically to reduce transmission down to the point where tracing is again possible.
I'd argue that too many people are numb to these risks. Popping a pill should be seen as scary. Driving two blocks down is making a life/death risk calculation. Sure some people will take that risk every day, dozen of times a day, without nothing happening.
But we should still acknowledge there is a risk, and I'd argue it should be reduced to whatever level makes sense for the situation and not shrug it away as "it's just life"
PS: this is mostly a reaction to "we would have to shut down life as we know it". My point "life as we know it" shouldn't be the status quo.
While I get you point about mental and physical breakdown, paracetamol overdose [0] for instance is a fairly common thing. Too many people see it at the same level as coffee or a redbull, when it's something else altogether. Same for people abusing antibiotics, whith far reaching consequences going way beyond a single person's stress level.
For driving, sure too much fear depletes mental resources. But currently we are around 1.3 billion people just for the death count each year, and the majority of accidents occur on short daily trips on well know roads, from lack of focus and stress.
[0] https://www.nps.org.au/news/paracetamol-overdoses-rise [1] https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/road-traffi...
I'd bet all these worst-case symptoms are _also_ present in those hit badly by the flu or other corona viruses.
Indeed, after some googling, same is true for H1N1:
https://www.kidney.org/news/newsroom/nr/H1N1Patients
and the flu:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/984071
These type of articles posted by OP are mostly clickbait. While they ARE true, it's also true for all similar diseases.
That could mean better hardware sensing, better models, better interfaces, better networks, better funding, better education, ...
Perhaps you would be better served by something like Techcrunch.
(1) The sample of people who went to hospital are presumably already more susceptible to lung disease than the normal population.
(2) This doesn't include a comparison to the existing flu and other existing diseases. Maybe some percent of ordinary flu cause long term symptoms and they just don't get picked up. A surprising number of people will be quietly nursing chronic conditions and not talking about them.
(3) How many people are we talking here? Need to see some %. There are people who die of flesh eating bacteria; world is a scary place. If it only affects a small number of people it isn't that important.
So not really journalism, but agenda/propaganda. Maybe not the worst agenda and much better than: " we have to accept total surveillance to get back to "normal", but still not really journalism.