Quote:
Originally Posted by twdm
You're more likely to die from a car accident than to die from COVID-19, but go ahead, wear a bucket over your head and hide in your house for a year.
Healthcare professionals look at hard facts and statistics. Not emotion. That is the foundation of modern medicine. If we were to pander to uneducated masses, then we would be giving snake oils, tiger balms, aromatherapy or whatever hipsters and single mothers like to use today to treat killer diseases.
The hard facts are:
1. low mortality rates (even if you exclude chinese data, absolute rates are low)
2. mortality rates increase for the elderly and people with comorbid conditions (eg. heart conditions, diabetes etc) which is the same for all respiratory infections (so far no pediatric deaths, but likely a vulnerable group as well)
3. the CDC is staffed by medical professionals who have a duty to protect. Sure you can say some people may be pressured into certain statements politically, but do you really think all the doctors and allied health professionals who are working there would stay silent? If you can't trust the CDC and the WHO you might as well go to a naturopathic doctor for the rest of your life. Please don't vaccinate your children as well because it's all political.
If you disagree, you are welcome to post facts and prove me wrong.
Lastly, coronaviruses have always been around and the mortality rates are similar. You're never going to eliminate it just like how there's always a new flu every year. This particular strain is just more infectious than previous years. Let's say that this one hangs around distributes in a seasonal pattern like the flu. Are you going to hide for the rest of your life?
(Smallpox is the only viral disease eliminated by intervention in the history of man. Let that sink in for a second)
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If you look at Italian data alone, for anywhere without a HIGHLY (cap for emphasis) advanced medical infrastructure, the mortality rate is around 20%. In all other countries, where you can count the cases with your fingers, it's still ok and death rate is still low because their current infrastructure can handle it. Korea, Italy, Iran... etc all had major outbreak because their medical system could no longer handle. Take all that into consideration and get back to me to tell me that the mortality is low.
I'm not going to be too pessimistic. I do think people are being unreasonable with their behaviors in this situation. But the fact is, this virus might very well be the worst in our lifetime. However, if we, as a society, take the necessary procedures, like avoid mass crowd gathering, constant sanitizing our hands and avoid unnecessary trips abroad or even just to the airport, we can reduce the potential of further major outbreak by a magnitude.
If China's data is to be believed... (which I don't think... but let's just do for the sake of argument), harsh interventions are working for them (province-wide lockdown). And if we can do a more civilized, but similar effectiveness approach, we could reduce the spread by many folds and even eradicate in countries like ours where we don't have many cases to begin with.