HandsomeTom43
Registered User
- May 2, 2018
- 692
- 980
I agree with all your inclinations.
1. The United States--despite knowing about the coronavirus for months in advanced--was completely unprepared for this. People can compare coronavirus to the flu as far as mortality rates, but the bottom line is the flu seems to vary year to year, based on which one of the variations of the flu attacks people. The flu shot is a crap-shoot too for those of you who were wondering. Unless things have changed, the flu shot is one of the two types they expect to run rampant for that particular "flu season" and there are 4 types of flu with multiple variations. However Flu D hasn't affected people yet, to my knowledge. I digress. I think the mortality rate will drop world wide as we go deeper. In roughly five months only 150k cases, who knows how many cases have been unreported. SK has less than 1% mortality rate and I figure at the end of the day, the final mortality rate for Covid-19 will be below 2% and possibly less than 1%. South Korea has been on the ball too, and so has Japan. I think looking at those two countries will give you an accurate assessment of the actual possible damage that can be done in the United STate.s
2. Yes, I believe that is the case, and I sort of explained why in number 1. People who are immuno-compromised are almost always going to pass on to an infection whether it be the flu or pneumonia. Once the number of cases continues to grow, the number of deaths I think will go down, it usually always does in this pandemic cases. China has indicated that it has already peaked in their country, where it started, who knows with China honestly, but that probably is the case. Based on the current trajactory, I would be shocked to see the deaths of Covid-19 top 25k for this calendar year.
3. Swine Flu lasted for close to two years. Estimates suggest atleast 1 billion people had contracted it with a large range of 150k-650k deaths attributed world wide. Again, it goes back to killing elderly populations, whom, in many cases an accurate cause of death can be convoluted due to many afflictions. Even with the larger number the mortality rate was less than 1%. The Swine Flu was also the same strand that causes the Spanish Flu 90 years before which wiped out a lot of people. I think, without a doubt, Swine flu will have killed many more people that Covid-19. So, I would tend to agree that the Swine Flu should have been taken more serious than coronavirus, and I also agree that the media is overblowing it. I think social media has a huge amount of influence as to why. We're in such a different world now than we used to be, information traveled fast then, but even faster now. I remember I was in college then I was around 22, and no one was sweating Swine Flu, and to me, historically it will be way worse than Covid-19. However, as I said in my previous post, Covid-19 will and has cause WAY more damage to the economy than any pandemic thing I can remember.
4. My girlfriend suffers from extreme anxiety, and so does her mother. She is not worried at all, but her mother definitely is stressed to the max (her mother is around 50 years of age). It's very possible that the stress, and possibly ignorant decisions made by people will be responsible for thousands of deaths. I don't think it will topple the number of fatalities due to the virus, but I've never seen such widespread panic. This is the worst pandemic of my lifetime. I'm almost 33, so as far back as I can remember was about 2000 when West Nile Virus was making everyone scared of mosquitoes.
Man, you're definitely not wrong. I remember when Swine Flu was big, one of the first things I remember hearing was the number of deaths compared to the regular flu and the regular flu always kill more people than we would like to think. I think that helps keep it into perspective for most people. The elderly definitely need to stay in, and everyone else needs to take the right precautions, but I see no reason to not continue to live your life. I also don't believe the media thought this was going to explode like it has, that's why I say I don't believe it purposefully hyped it up to the point of literal mass hysteria.
Heath made some good points, and I'm going to listen to that podcast tomorrow. I'm a huge fan of Sam Harris, anyways. Having been an MLT for 2 years and an MT for 2 years and as an MT working with a pathologist, I was able to see some crazy stuff sometimes. I feel like this is bad because we don't have an answer, but overall, people should still be more worried about heart disease and cancer, and it's not even close.
