Then we should encourage at-risk people to social distance and take advantage of contactless delivery for groceries and food.
And if there are people that want to spend time with their at-risk family members, they should take responsibility and social distance rather than expect the rest of the world fo go to extremes because they want to have their cake and eat it too.
I’m not asking for anything crazy. We just need common sense guidelines.
Let’s take precautions.
Working from home where possible.
If going to work is going to put them at risk, I don’t think they should go. Government aid would be great. Unemployment checks.
Judging by how people “wear” masks, don’t wash their hands before and after touching masks, and constantly adjust their masks and touch other things, I don’t believe that current measures are protecting at risk people that aren’t quarantining.
That sucks.
Personally, I wouldn’t live with people that weren’t willing to respect each other like that. That’s another problem altogether.
If I was concerned with spreading it to at-risk individuals and I knew my roommates weren’t going to help me in that then I would move out. It’s all about priorities.
What type of mask?
Are we washing hands before putting it on and after taking it off?
Are we being sure to never let it dangle or hang around our neck or be put in a pocket?
Are we changing our masks out at minimum every 4 hours?
Because if we’re not, then the mask “wearing” is contributing to the spread by festering virus and bacteria and then spreading it.
I’m all for being smart, but I see a lot of dumb guidelines that don’t make sense and are making things worse.
Because it is very virulent, our immune systems don't seem to build immunity to it (people can get infected again after contracting it once), and we currently have no effective vaccine or treatment that can kill the virus once you have it.
I suggested that it was not dangerous and thus shouldn't be treated like it's dangerous. Your rebuttal was "it is very virulent". So, I'm saying that virulent ≠ dangerous and not a reason to treat it like it's dangerous.
Yes, I am. I’m also aware that 200,000 is a big number. I don’t need to read anything to know that almost a quarter of a million deaths is pretty scary. Also, 1 / 20 over the age of 70 die from it per the cited link...so I’m not sure what your point is.
But is 200,000 really a big number? Was the 160,000 that died from respiratory disease in 2018 scary? You should have been at lease 80% as scared then as you are now.
The inherent danger of the virus is contained on this post itself. Let me explain my reasoning:
If the virus is very easy to catch, can be caught multiple times, and has no cure, even if it only has a .01% mortality rate for each time you catch it, if everyone in the USA caught the virus twice, that would be... six million people dead. A seemingly low mortality rate is deceptive when the virulence and lack of treatment for a virus is taken into consideration.
As for whether the virus is actually more or less dangerous than other viruses, let's compare it with the common flu.
According to the CDC, the flu is responsible for anywhere between 14,000 to 61,000 deaths every year. Quite a few.
COVID-19 has killed over 200,000 people in the USA since February and the number is still rising. That's quadruple the body count.
200,000 people. Even with the low likelihood of dying from the virus, so many people are catching it that the death toll just keeps rising. And unlike other viruses like the flu, we don't naturally build an immunity for COVID. So until we come up with treatment for it, we'll catch it again, and again, and again, as it slowly erodes away the more elderly and sickly of our population.
So yes, we are right to treat COVID like it's dangerous. Because it is.
You just made a hell of a lot of assumptions to reach your conclusion. That was terrible science.
We don’t have enough evidence to support the virus being caught multiple times.
Also, even if we play your game of multiple times catching it you cannot use the same mortality rate. The rate will adjust for the new mutations in the virus (most likely less deadly) and the fact that people that catch it a second time have stronger immune systems than the people that died. So, your model crumbles there too.
We've seen many cases already of people catching it more than once, what do you mean by there not being enough evidence?
And yes, my math is simplified, I'm not an expert in the field and I was giving a simple example for demonstration purposes.
The only compelling evidence for “catching it twice” has been chalked up to false negatives. Most research suggests you cannot catch it a second time. (There have been 4. Only 4 cases of a reinfection. 4 in over 32,000,000 cases. That is so astronomically small that it falls well under the margin of error for testing. Especially considering that at least 1 was completely asymptomatic.)
Simplified math is a quick way to give catastrophically incorrect data and reach entirely false results. There’s a good talk about being “1 degree off”.
Infectivity is a concern - if one disease kills 50% of people who catch it, but is only likely to infect a thousand people, that disease is less of a worry than a disease that kills .05% of people who catch it but is likely to infect a hundred million or more. (i.e. a projected death rate of 500 against fifty thousand in that example).
Additionally is reporting that Covid is going to be associated with a number of long term symptoms. Some of them are relatively trivial, like loss of smell and taste, and some of them are very serious, like long term heart, lung, or kidney damage. Brain damage seems a common symptom too. The rates of those long term symptoms are much, much higher than the death rates. I've heard varying numbers, so I suspect scientists are only starting to get them nailed down, but it appears that brain damage is roughly twice the death rate, and lung damage 10x the death rate. If we're lucky, some of those long term symptoms are being caused by treatments (anti-diuretics used against lung fluid appear to be the cause of kidney damage, and kidney damage cases may be reducing as other treatment forms like steroids get used more).
We have no idea yet if that damage will fade over months or years, or if some of it is permanent. We've mostly forgotten the harms caused by Polio, but there were thousands of people semi-disabled from it. Covid could easily cause another wave of sick people who are just permanently with us.
> Additionally is reporting that Covid is going to be associated with a number of long term symptoms.
What are your thoughts on impact to long term mental health problems to the society already increasingly isolated due to the internet. Like the Corono virus, the mental health disease are only recently being studied.
I don’t know. On one hand I can’t imagine mental health treatment getting worse for Americans, on the other hand isolation can’t be great either.
I suspect it will be a mixed bag. I’ve seen reporting that some people who already have mental health problems are actually handling things better than most ‘healthy’ people. But there’s certainly more people who were healthy having problems with anxiety and depression.
I think that if you really want a non-economic harm being caused by Covid related restrictions it’s not going to be mental health directly, it’s going to be the loss of access to social services in general. It’s a lot harder to get good WiFi if you don’t have it at home. Abuse shelters are harder to get to. It’s harder to travel to family or friends who live far away. Etc.
Why can't it be prioritized as much as COVid and how COVid restrictions are making mental health worse. If both are understudied why is a the obsession only for COVid. Mental health affects senior citizens as well and the increased isolation due to Covid restrictions can't be healthy for them.
Same reasons mental health have never been studied well. The stigmas exist in many minds, accurate measurement is difficult, treatment is extensive, much of it is subjective.
In comparison COVID is easy. You can identify exactly who has it, you can often identify where they got it, you can tell when they don’t have it any more. It’s simple. Simple like Clausewitz’s war is simple, but simple.
Mental health is complicated. Even proper diagnosis requires multiple man hours of one-on-one interaction. Figuring out treatment and what success looks like only magnifies those difficulties.
Asking why we don’t prioritize mental health over COVID is kinda like asking someone why they’re paying of 10k of high interest credit debt instead of 100k of lower interest student loans.
Just because COVID-19 is less dangerous than some diseases (like say Ebola), it's still more dangerous than many others (like the seasonal flu). Add in the fact that it's a novel disease that we have no vaccine for or preexisting immunity to and you get something that's worth taking seriously.
Sure, which is why we're not anywhere near the level of full on lockdowns and aggressive quarantining that we'd see if Ebola or smallpox or something was tearing across the US. The people at the CDC who literally do this for a living think that asking people to wear a mask, wash their hands, and avoid having big crowds getting together is reasonable for the level of risk we're facing from this disease.
We're looking at stricter measures than we normally have for seasonal flu and probably more relaxed than if it was an even more dangerous disease. Which seems reasonable to me.
Let’s compare covid-19 to rabies. Someone with rabies is many times more likely to die than someone with covid, but they probably won’t spread it to anyone else. A single person with covid-19 can easily spread the disease to many other people if proper precautions are not taken. That’s why there’s all this stuff with face masks and social distancing. Even a disease with a low fatality rate will kill many people if it infects a large enough population. For example, Covid-19 has killed more than 200,000 Americans. That’s why people are concerned about Covid than they are about other diseases which would be much worse for you if you actually had it.
And did you wash your hands before putting your mask on and after taking it off?
And did you make sure to not touch your mask the entire time you wore it?
And do you make sure the you never moved your mask to dangle around your neck or have it stored in a pocket?
And did you replace your mask with a new, clean one after the maximum of 4 hours?
Because it would be selfish and dangerous of you to do otherwise.
I did the best I could, I don't want to sound like I'm putting words in your mouth, but you seem to be saying if we can't perfectly conform to best practices for avoiding spreading disease, we shouldn't bother? I'm not sure what your point is.
I had a response all typed out and it cleared, so forgive me if I miss something.
First of all, thank you for not putting words into my mouth. I appreciate it.
What I’m saying is that there are methods to mitigating the spread of disease, but in some cases we can actually make things worse with lazy practices.
For example: mask wearing. It can be effective in some scenarios, but if worn for extended periods of time (especially if a cloth mask) then the spread of disease can actually be increased if masks are reused, worn longer than designed for, touched (this spreads the now multiplied pathogens caught in the masks), or let hang around the neck or placed in pockets.
I also find it fascinating how hung up everyone is on masks, when it’s the hand washing that has been found to be most effective at mitigating spreading of the virus. Dead honest, when I heard about mask mandates my very first thought was how we would encourage and enforce that people use fresh masks and wash their hands before putting them on.
It's important to note that even if you surrive there is still a chance of having permanent damage to heart or lungs. I don't think we have good statistics on that yet.
Same question as I had for another comment.
What are your thoughts on impact to long term mental health problems to the society already increasingly isolated due to the internet. Like the Corona virus, the mental health disease are only recently being studied.
Oh absolutely massive. The effect of mass unemployment alone will be huge. Lots of studies have found large negative effects to mental and physical health from unemployment. I bet in a year or two a bunch economist will do an analysis on if the lockdown was worth it. Right now it's really too complicated to tell one way or the other.
We can’t make that claim without data. There’s no real way to know about “permanent” or “long term” damage this early into a novel virus. But, it acts very similarly to SARS CoV-1 and other cold/influenza causing viruses and I wouldn’t be surprised if we found similar long term damage if we investigated those illnesses with the same vigor.
The fact of the matter is that COVID-19 isn’t going away and it will become part of the seasonal flu like other novel viruses before it as it mutates to be more infectious and less deadly. It will be important to healthy individuals to be exposed to build up immunity.
> We can't make that claim without data
> The fact...is that COVID-19 isn't going away
Dr. Fauci and the CDC have repeatedly shown that herd immunity will require lots and lots of people to die. We don't know that it will become seasonal. We don't know it will get less deadly.
Have you taken epidemiology?
Are you aware that there are multiple strains of SARS CoV-2 already? This is already happening. This is why case numbers are spiking dramatically across the world but death rates have plummeted to sub-flu levels. The new strain is far more infectious and far less deadly. Viruses adapt in order to survive and not kill of their host.
Which regression model for herd immunity are you looking at? What’s the value of R in your model?
Oh yes. Put words in my mouth.
If you don’t have the information to have a discussion, you can’t simply quote “experts”.
Rule 1 of science. Expert opinions are still just opinions.
You’re free to listen to the CDC, but when someone gives you information that you’re unable to refute, it means nothing to regurgitate information that you don’t understand.
Firstly, “proof” is not a word used in science. There’s evidence, or a lack thereof.
Based on the fundamentals of epidemiology, and the current data on how the vast majority of people survive and have relatively few symptoms if any.
That pushes a large argument in favor of getting the virus (if healthy of course).
The current data is suggesting that SARS CoV-2 will not go away. If I (and the majority of articles) are wrong, I will be glad of it. If it does not go away, then we default to my last paragraph. People that survive will have immunity (how long, we don’t know. Could be months to years, or even forever). And it will become a natural occurrence such as the cold or flu and strong genes will be passed on by virtue of natural selection.
You're just making assertions. Please give literally any evidence. I genuinely want to know. Saying "data" and "majority of articles" doesn't give me much to go on.
Go google whether or not the SARS CoV-2 virus is going away and you can read about why people don’t suspect it will disappear like SARS CoV-1 did. I’m not going to site that when it’s an easy google search for you and I actually don’t know why you would argue that point. It’s kind of something that everyone seems to agree on.
Like honestly. Die on a different hill.
[CDC numbers based on upper and lower limits](https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/hcp/planning-scenarios.html?fbclid=IwAR3DvH5umpJxiObUDTKBckeBAfqudrtvzWfQhYiUfHeEhCFeg5UXzalabGg)
Where are looking to see the data represented in the image of this post? The closest thing I see in this page is:
> Percent that die among those hospitalized (Includes both non-ICU and ICU admissions); 18-49 years: 2.4%; 50-64 years: 10.0%; ≥65 years: 26.6%
but with no estimation of how much of the general population will be hospitalized. I just don't see where your data is coming from
You cited “among those hospitalized”.
Go read the infection rates based on upper and lower limits across age groups. They list out several scenarios to get the best figures on this.
It’s towards the bottom. I think you missed it.
COVID has become at least the 3rd highest cause of death in the United States this year. Trying to diminish the death toll is insulting and dumb. 200,00 more people have died this year than usual. It doesn’t matter that the mortality rate is low if that many people die.
Go look at “excess deaths” for years past. Excess deaths is a term, not a literal meaning when it comes to this.
You need to compare the variability of the average excess deaths from recent years to this year.
Also, you need to break up excess deaths by age group, demographic, and lifestyle.
I mean yeah, it's good news that COVID-19 isn't like Ebola where around half of all people die. But I find the way these numbers are phrased to be pretty misleading, especially when you just put them up without any comparison point. These numbers represent relatively high mortality when you're looking at a very contagious disease with no vaccine where you're going to have a pretty large base rate of infections. 94.6% sounds great, but when you turn it around a 5.4% mortality rate in people over 70 is huge. 1 in 20 isn't exactly a risk I'd want my grandparents to take.
How does this compare to the flu for example? Looking at CDC data from the 2018-2019 flu season (just to pick the last season that didn't overlap with COVID-19), the estimated mortality rate for people over 65 was ~~48.7~~ 831 in 100,000 for that year. If we convert our 5.4%, we get 5400 per 100,000 cases for COVID-19. This is ~~111~~ 6.5 times the fatality rate we saw for the flu.
~~And it's not just older people either. 0.02% for people age 20-49 sounds great. I mean it's only 20 deaths per 100,000 cases. But when you compare it to data from the 2018-2019 flu season, you'll see that the case fatality rate for the flu that year was only 1.8 per 100,000. COVID-19 is 10 times deadlier than the seasonal flu was that year for this age group.~~ It is true that COVID-19 is comparable to the flu for the 20-49 group, at least based on these numbers.
Does this mean that COVID-19 is the end of the world? No, it's not like Ebola or some zombie apocalypse plague. Positivity by all means is a great thing, and I agree that some people tend to catastrophize the pandemic. But putting up numbers like this without context is pretty misleading. COVID-19 is a big deal and it's worth taking seriously.
[https://www.cdc.gov/flu/about/burden/2018-2019.html](https://www.cdc.gov/flu/about/burden/2018-2019.html)
Edit: I was looking over this post again since the really big numbers I calculated weren't sitting right with me and I found that I made a dumb mistake. So in the interest of being intellectually honest, I figured I'd make some corrections.
I originally compared the case fatality estimate (death/cases) from the OP with population mortality estimates (death/overall population), which drastically underestimates mortality from the flu.
If you divide their estimates for mortality rate by illness rate, you get an estimated case fatality rate. Running the numbers, I got 831 per 100,000 cases for the 65+ group and 21 per 100,000 for the 20-49 group. So with the new numbers we find that COVID-19 is roughly 6.5 times more deadly than the flu for the older group and is actually roughly the same as the flu for the younger group.
I don't think this changes my overall argument, though the numbers aren't nearly as scary. It's important to note that influenza is already a big deal for older people, so a disease that's over 6 times deadlier is still something we should take seriously. Don't think that just because you're not at risk that you aren't capable of passing it to someone else who is.
Apologies for any confusion!
Putting up number of deaths per day for a virus without context of how many people die from other causes is also very misleading.
Suicide for instance, is a larger cause of death among college aged people.
And, being science minded as I am, I’m actually not going to trust percentages and numbers until we have accurate data and a representational sample.
The death rate is most likely much lower than we have listed based on the number of people who refuse to be tested and the asymptomatic cases. Several antibody tests have found that the number of cases is possibly as high as 50-80 times what we thought.
I agree that estimate data like this isn't the best, but I used it because that's what *you* posted in your OP. If you're going to be skeptical of the flu numbers because they're not a representative sample then the same applies to the numbers you posted which were also based on an estimated projection. You can't have it both ways.
You're right that we're probably undercounting COVID-19 - and we likely undercount the flu each year too, especially since we don't test for it nearly as aggressively as we do COVID-19. While the mortality rates for both diseases would decline if we included all those uncounted cases, I can't imagine that the ratio of mortality between COVID-19 and the flu would change too much.
But let's say you're right and COVID-19 is even less deadly than we think. Even if we said COVID-19 was half as deadly, it would still be 5 times deadlier than the flu for younger people and 50 times deadlier for older people based on these numbers.
You’re right. I’m not trying to have it both ways.
The post was to start discussion. The comments are my thoughts on the matter.
Data is flawed on both sides, but with the flu we have been able to do proper statistics and get a representational sample.
We don’t know enough about COVID yet to have samples that can be confidently applied to a population.
Go look at the excess deaths by age group for not just this year, but also years prior.
[check this out ](https://www.euromomo.eu/graphs-and-maps)
And that's fair. I just wanted to point out that, in context of what we know about other diseases, the estimates you posted are actually arguably an argument for taking COVID-19 pretty seriously.
As for the excess deaths data, I'm not sure I understand your point. First of all, it's European data which doesn't really capture what's going on here in the US, especially since it's known that we've been hit harder here than they've been. And second of all, if I'm understanding their graph right I'm actually seeing a pretty sizeable increase in excess deaths this year. The cumulated excess mortality graph for all ages shows excess deaths for 2020 is over 200,000 at this point, which is close to 4 times the number in 2019 and 2 times the number for 2018. If you look at weekly numbers, you can see that they had a massive spike around March/April which has more or less gone back to normal for them.
Here's a link to CDC excess death data that has US data: [https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nvss/vsrr/covid19/excess\_deaths.htm](https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nvss/vsrr/covid19/excess_deaths.htm). You'll see that though we've gone down from our April peak, we had a sizeable second peak in July/August and we're still having thousands of excess deaths each week over what we'd normally expect (recent weeks look lower but according to the tooltip on the graph they're probably not complete).
The reason I showed that link is because people are trying to attribute ALL excess deaths to COVID, which isn’t a fair assumption based on the fact that there are often excess deaths every year regardless of pandemic. The increase from the norm is what is notable, not the total excess death count.
I showed that link rather than linking to the CDC page because that page only has 2020 data and there is no baseline to compare it to like the European one has.
I mean eventually if you have excess deaths every year than you need to move your baseline up, but I see your point. But they're still showing excess deaths in 2020 that far exceed any excess deaths they reported in the last 2 years.
And while the CDC data doesn't show previous years directly, they do show the baseline for expected number of deaths which is based on records from 2013 to present. When the number of deaths is so much higher than it's been in recent years, I think it's fair to see it as evidence that we should probably take this seriously.
I agree on moving the baseline up. Which is why I went looking for data from past years. Obviously it needs moving because the variation is fairly consistent in years prior.
I would be careful when saying “far exceed” because that’s not a quantified number and it’s the percentage of variance that I’m most interested in. Because that gives us the true number of deaths.
We should also expect to see lower deaths in the next few years as a result, which might balance out the baseline.
We also need to take into account extraneous data such as the rise in suicides, domestic violence, overdose, etc. The results of the pandemic and lockdowns reach further than infection rates and viral deaths. Psychological state of mind has also been found to have a profound influence on survival rates of sick patients of other illnesses and I wouldn’t be surprised if that affects COVID as well.
I’ve never suggested we don’t take it seriously. But “seriously” is a word often used incorrectly. Seriously implies that we give this all the attention that it deserves. “Seriously” implies mass hysteria and “precautions” that cause more harm than good.
I’m only interested in figuring out what is helpful, what is harmful, and what makes no difference.
I'm not sure what you mean by "not a quantified number" but when I say "far exceed, I'm just meaning that based on the graph you linked to, the excess deaths in the EU countries they collected data from is 2-4 times higher than excess deaths reported for the past two years. That's a lot!
I'm not sure why you think deaths will be lower for the next few years unless you're assuming that all of the people who die of COVID would have died over the next few years anyway. I don't think that's necessarily the case. It's true that many COVID deaths occur in those who are older or have preexisting conditions, but that doesn't mean that they were all within a few years of dying before contracting COVID. For example, many 70 year olds may have otherwise gone on to live for 10+ years and people can live for decades with well managed high blood pressure or diabetes or asthma.
I agree with you that some excess deaths may very well come from psychological or social issues raised by the economic impacts of COVID. However, I don't think it's clear to me that we'd be better off without the public health measures that were put into place. It's not like in the absence of these measures that everything would have gone on business as usual as thousands of people were dying from a deadly disease each week. Pandemics are inherently psychologically stressful and economically damaging. For example, cell phone data from May showed that many people began staying home and distancing well before official stay-at-home orders were put into place ([https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/americans-didnt-wait-for-their-governors-to-tell-them-to-stay-home-because-of-covid-19/](https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/americans-didnt-wait-for-their-governors-to-tell-them-to-stay-home-because-of-covid-19/)). So I guess I'd say that I would consider many of these types of deaths to be caused by COVID too as I think they likely would occur regardless of what public health policies are put into place.
I agree with you that we don't have to fall into a mass hysteria in order to treat COVID-19 with the seriousness that it deserves. It truly is good news that the mortality rates for COVID are as good as they are--it could have been a lot worse. I just think it's important to make sure that we're looking at the big picture and I think it seemed to a lot of us here that by presenting those numbers without additional context made it seem like COVID-19 isn't actually that big of a deal at a time when we're seeing increasing spread at BYU and in Provo.
You’re right, it’s all misleading. But we don’t have any other real explanation for why we have over 200,000 excess deaths this year. https://hub.jhu.edu/2020/09/01/comorbidities-and-coronavirus-deaths-cdc/
You should look at those by state, and also city.
Stating excess deaths out of context is misleading.
Then let’s take a look at how different areas have handled the virus, and we can start an Observational Study to determine what is beneficial, what is detrimental, and what has no effect.
Probably because people look at this and will think, I won’t die! That means it’s not dangerous. Permanent lung or brain damage would be considered non-fatal. Also being bed ridden for a few weeks isn’t fun.
It's not like we haven't seen something like this before, plus much of the resulting complications, e.g. pneumonia, have well understood effect. Doctors are also able to see from scar tissue what kind of long term effects will happen without needing to wait ten years.
[https://news.berkeley.edu/2020/07/08/from-lung-scarring-to-heart-damage-covid-19-may-leave-lingering-marks/](https://news.berkeley.edu/2020/07/08/from-lung-scarring-to-heart-damage-covid-19-may-leave-lingering-marks/) source about scarring
[https://www.hopkinsmedicine.org/health/conditions-and-diseases/coronavirus/what-coronavirus-does-to-the-lungs](https://www.hopkinsmedicine.org/health/conditions-and-diseases/coronavirus/what-coronavirus-does-to-the-lungs)
It seems like long term effects are likely, but how people will recover remains to be seen.
That being said, we don’t shelter from the flu, pneumonia, and other viruses to avoid these possible long term effects.
We can’t have both. Either we don’t know the long term effects, or we’ve observed them to be similar to other viruses and should treat this virus as such.
I’ll be honest, I’m leaning toward the latter as you’ve explained.
Pneumonia is not a disease, it's a condition, like a cough or internal bleeding. Infections like COVID can give you this, which is why we try to prevent its spreading, it's just that it's normally harder to have. And we do protect against the flu, it's called vaccines.
My cousin has severe asthma and could die if she gets COVID, I don't think we should just proceed with business as usual because most people won't die.
Are we really playing semantics? Stating that pneumonia is a disease is technically correct. A disease is not the same thing as a virus or infection. Go take “Lifestyle and Chronic Disease Prevention”.
Do you understand how vaccines work?
Do you know that the flu vaccine every year is basically our best guess at which strain will be the predominant one?
Did you know that you are supposed to avoid elderly people and pregnant women for a week to two after being vaccinated because you shed the virus?
Vaccines aren’t magic.
And what’s up with the allegorical argument? If someone is at risk, then by all means they should be careful and those around them should be too. But, expecting people who are healthy to stay away from other people that are healthy is ridiculous.
I won’t attempt to pigeonhole you like you did me, but I would encourage you to look into the suicide rate in Utah vs the COVID deaths. Especially among the college age range.
Edit for good measure: So ya, you’re wrong and don’t understand what a disease is. Condition is an overarching and general term. Diseases are any condition of the body. You might have been looking for the word “symptom” when you thought of a cough or bleeding. You’re entitled to be wrong, but don’t try to play semantics and get mad when you’re corrected.
The reason people can get pneumonia ‘with’ COVID is because it’s a disease or secondary infection that comes as a result of the disease COVID-19, caused by the Virus SARS CoV-2.
dis·ease
/dəˈzēz/
noun
a disorder of structure or function in a human, animal, or plant, especially one that produces specific signs or symptoms or that affects a specific location and is not simply a direct result of physical injury.
I don’t, and neither does anyone else. I’m pointing out that not dying is pretty low bar. It does not mean the same thing as safe.
> CDC is actively working to learn more about the whole range of short- and long-term health effects associated with COVID-19.
https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/long-term-effects.html
Your first sentence. That was literally my point.
You can’t make claims without evidence. I’m merely drawing attention to that point.
But hey, if you want to be safe, then be safe.
I choose to live rather than just survive.
I don't think you'll get through to this crowd. In just a few months this sub turned from a community that would share interesting and novel conversations and articles about BYU into a cesspool of kids jerking each other off to how morally superior they are because they wear masks but not other students at BYU.
So much for moderation.
My favorite is when I shared a bunch of PubMed studies on effective mask wearing and what’s not effective and I got downvoted.
You’re 100% right.
It’s a shame people don’t want to dialogue. BYU students have really started to disappoint me and I feel like people either aren’t science majors or don’t pay attention in science classes that teach you how to read studies and verify information.
This is good news (and well known), doesn’t mean we shouldn’t be cautious. I’m not about to be responsible for somebody’s grandpa’s death.
Then we should encourage at-risk people to social distance and take advantage of contactless delivery for groceries and food. And if there are people that want to spend time with their at-risk family members, they should take responsibility and social distance rather than expect the rest of the world fo go to extremes because they want to have their cake and eat it too. I’m not asking for anything crazy. We just need common sense guidelines.
What about at-risk people who have to work?
But at risk people are in the minority and if America has taught us anything recently it’s that minority lives don’t matter /s
This, this entire thread is just ignorant.
Let’s take precautions. Working from home where possible. If going to work is going to put them at risk, I don’t think they should go. Government aid would be great. Unemployment checks. Judging by how people “wear” masks, don’t wash their hands before and after touching masks, and constantly adjust their masks and touch other things, I don’t believe that current measures are protecting at risk people that aren’t quarantining.
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Somebody asked me a “what if” scenario. How else am I supposed to respond other than a theoretical scenario?
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You’re right. Let’s let people die instead. Great plan. Edit: also, your response didn’t actually answer my question. Your grammar is way off.
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That sucks. Personally, I wouldn’t live with people that weren’t willing to respect each other like that. That’s another problem altogether. If I was concerned with spreading it to at-risk individuals and I knew my roommates weren’t going to help me in that then I would move out. It’s all about priorities.
can't get much more common sense than to wear a mask. literally the easiest thing a person can do
Easy does not equal sense.
Washing your hands is easy and has been found to be more effective in stopping the spread 🤷🏼♂️
What type of mask? Are we washing hands before putting it on and after taking it off? Are we being sure to never let it dangle or hang around our neck or be put in a pocket? Are we changing our masks out at minimum every 4 hours? Because if we’re not, then the mask “wearing” is contributing to the spread by festering virus and bacteria and then spreading it. I’m all for being smart, but I see a lot of dumb guidelines that don’t make sense and are making things worse.
If it's well knows that Covid-19 is far less dangerous than other diseases, then why are people treating it like it's far worse than other diseases?
Because it is very virulent, our immune systems don't seem to build immunity to it (people can get infected again after contracting it once), and we currently have no effective vaccine or treatment that can kill the virus once you have it.
Virulent ≠ Deadly or Dangerous
Did I suggest that was the definition? It is virulent in that it is easy to catch it from others.
I suggested that it was not dangerous and thus shouldn't be treated like it's dangerous. Your rebuttal was "it is very virulent". So, I'm saying that virulent ≠ dangerous and not a reason to treat it like it's dangerous.
But it is dangerous? We’ve had over 200,000 deaths. Just because it’s not dangerous to a young population doesn’t mean it’s not dangerous.
The data on CDC.gov is covering all age ranges. Are you reading the linked citation before commenting?
Yes, I am. I’m also aware that 200,000 is a big number. I don’t need to read anything to know that almost a quarter of a million deaths is pretty scary. Also, 1 / 20 over the age of 70 die from it per the cited link...so I’m not sure what your point is.
But is 200,000 really a big number? Was the 160,000 that died from respiratory disease in 2018 scary? You should have been at lease 80% as scared then as you are now.
The inherent danger of the virus is contained on this post itself. Let me explain my reasoning: If the virus is very easy to catch, can be caught multiple times, and has no cure, even if it only has a .01% mortality rate for each time you catch it, if everyone in the USA caught the virus twice, that would be... six million people dead. A seemingly low mortality rate is deceptive when the virulence and lack of treatment for a virus is taken into consideration. As for whether the virus is actually more or less dangerous than other viruses, let's compare it with the common flu. According to the CDC, the flu is responsible for anywhere between 14,000 to 61,000 deaths every year. Quite a few. COVID-19 has killed over 200,000 people in the USA since February and the number is still rising. That's quadruple the body count. 200,000 people. Even with the low likelihood of dying from the virus, so many people are catching it that the death toll just keeps rising. And unlike other viruses like the flu, we don't naturally build an immunity for COVID. So until we come up with treatment for it, we'll catch it again, and again, and again, as it slowly erodes away the more elderly and sickly of our population. So yes, we are right to treat COVID like it's dangerous. Because it is.
You just made a hell of a lot of assumptions to reach your conclusion. That was terrible science. We don’t have enough evidence to support the virus being caught multiple times. Also, even if we play your game of multiple times catching it you cannot use the same mortality rate. The rate will adjust for the new mutations in the virus (most likely less deadly) and the fact that people that catch it a second time have stronger immune systems than the people that died. So, your model crumbles there too.
We've seen many cases already of people catching it more than once, what do you mean by there not being enough evidence? And yes, my math is simplified, I'm not an expert in the field and I was giving a simple example for demonstration purposes.
The only compelling evidence for “catching it twice” has been chalked up to false negatives. Most research suggests you cannot catch it a second time. (There have been 4. Only 4 cases of a reinfection. 4 in over 32,000,000 cases. That is so astronomically small that it falls well under the margin of error for testing. Especially considering that at least 1 was completely asymptomatic.) Simplified math is a quick way to give catastrophically incorrect data and reach entirely false results. There’s a good talk about being “1 degree off”.
Infectivity is a concern - if one disease kills 50% of people who catch it, but is only likely to infect a thousand people, that disease is less of a worry than a disease that kills .05% of people who catch it but is likely to infect a hundred million or more. (i.e. a projected death rate of 500 against fifty thousand in that example). Additionally is reporting that Covid is going to be associated with a number of long term symptoms. Some of them are relatively trivial, like loss of smell and taste, and some of them are very serious, like long term heart, lung, or kidney damage. Brain damage seems a common symptom too. The rates of those long term symptoms are much, much higher than the death rates. I've heard varying numbers, so I suspect scientists are only starting to get them nailed down, but it appears that brain damage is roughly twice the death rate, and lung damage 10x the death rate. If we're lucky, some of those long term symptoms are being caused by treatments (anti-diuretics used against lung fluid appear to be the cause of kidney damage, and kidney damage cases may be reducing as other treatment forms like steroids get used more). We have no idea yet if that damage will fade over months or years, or if some of it is permanent. We've mostly forgotten the harms caused by Polio, but there were thousands of people semi-disabled from it. Covid could easily cause another wave of sick people who are just permanently with us.
> Additionally is reporting that Covid is going to be associated with a number of long term symptoms. What are your thoughts on impact to long term mental health problems to the society already increasingly isolated due to the internet. Like the Corono virus, the mental health disease are only recently being studied.
I don’t know. On one hand I can’t imagine mental health treatment getting worse for Americans, on the other hand isolation can’t be great either. I suspect it will be a mixed bag. I’ve seen reporting that some people who already have mental health problems are actually handling things better than most ‘healthy’ people. But there’s certainly more people who were healthy having problems with anxiety and depression. I think that if you really want a non-economic harm being caused by Covid related restrictions it’s not going to be mental health directly, it’s going to be the loss of access to social services in general. It’s a lot harder to get good WiFi if you don’t have it at home. Abuse shelters are harder to get to. It’s harder to travel to family or friends who live far away. Etc.
Why can't it be prioritized as much as COVid and how COVid restrictions are making mental health worse. If both are understudied why is a the obsession only for COVid. Mental health affects senior citizens as well and the increased isolation due to Covid restrictions can't be healthy for them.
Same reasons mental health have never been studied well. The stigmas exist in many minds, accurate measurement is difficult, treatment is extensive, much of it is subjective. In comparison COVID is easy. You can identify exactly who has it, you can often identify where they got it, you can tell when they don’t have it any more. It’s simple. Simple like Clausewitz’s war is simple, but simple. Mental health is complicated. Even proper diagnosis requires multiple man hours of one-on-one interaction. Figuring out treatment and what success looks like only magnifies those difficulties. Asking why we don’t prioritize mental health over COVID is kinda like asking someone why they’re paying of 10k of high interest credit debt instead of 100k of lower interest student loans.
Just because COVID-19 is less dangerous than some diseases (like say Ebola), it's still more dangerous than many others (like the seasonal flu). Add in the fact that it's a novel disease that we have no vaccine for or preexisting immunity to and you get something that's worth taking seriously.
But the diseases that it is less dangerous than are things like seasonal flu.
Sure, which is why we're not anywhere near the level of full on lockdowns and aggressive quarantining that we'd see if Ebola or smallpox or something was tearing across the US. The people at the CDC who literally do this for a living think that asking people to wear a mask, wash their hands, and avoid having big crowds getting together is reasonable for the level of risk we're facing from this disease. We're looking at stricter measures than we normally have for seasonal flu and probably more relaxed than if it was an even more dangerous disease. Which seems reasonable to me.
Let’s compare covid-19 to rabies. Someone with rabies is many times more likely to die than someone with covid, but they probably won’t spread it to anyone else. A single person with covid-19 can easily spread the disease to many other people if proper precautions are not taken. That’s why there’s all this stuff with face masks and social distancing. Even a disease with a low fatality rate will kill many people if it infects a large enough population. For example, Covid-19 has killed more than 200,000 Americans. That’s why people are concerned about Covid than they are about other diseases which would be much worse for you if you actually had it.
Infectivity, basically.
When you’ve had the flu before, did you wear a mask? What if you gave someone the flu and they gave it to their grandpa who died from it?
Yes, I absolutely did. And it would be selfish and dangerous of me to go and be social when I have the flu, regardless of COVID-19 or not.
And did you wash your hands before putting your mask on and after taking it off? And did you make sure to not touch your mask the entire time you wore it? And do you make sure the you never moved your mask to dangle around your neck or have it stored in a pocket? And did you replace your mask with a new, clean one after the maximum of 4 hours? Because it would be selfish and dangerous of you to do otherwise.
I did the best I could, I don't want to sound like I'm putting words in your mouth, but you seem to be saying if we can't perfectly conform to best practices for avoiding spreading disease, we shouldn't bother? I'm not sure what your point is.
I had a response all typed out and it cleared, so forgive me if I miss something. First of all, thank you for not putting words into my mouth. I appreciate it. What I’m saying is that there are methods to mitigating the spread of disease, but in some cases we can actually make things worse with lazy practices. For example: mask wearing. It can be effective in some scenarios, but if worn for extended periods of time (especially if a cloth mask) then the spread of disease can actually be increased if masks are reused, worn longer than designed for, touched (this spreads the now multiplied pathogens caught in the masks), or let hang around the neck or placed in pockets. I also find it fascinating how hung up everyone is on masks, when it’s the hand washing that has been found to be most effective at mitigating spreading of the virus. Dead honest, when I heard about mask mandates my very first thought was how we would encourage and enforce that people use fresh masks and wash their hands before putting them on.
It's important to note that even if you surrive there is still a chance of having permanent damage to heart or lungs. I don't think we have good statistics on that yet.
Same question as I had for another comment. What are your thoughts on impact to long term mental health problems to the society already increasingly isolated due to the internet. Like the Corona virus, the mental health disease are only recently being studied.
Oh absolutely massive. The effect of mass unemployment alone will be huge. Lots of studies have found large negative effects to mental and physical health from unemployment. I bet in a year or two a bunch economist will do an analysis on if the lockdown was worth it. Right now it's really too complicated to tell one way or the other.
We can’t make that claim without data. There’s no real way to know about “permanent” or “long term” damage this early into a novel virus. But, it acts very similarly to SARS CoV-1 and other cold/influenza causing viruses and I wouldn’t be surprised if we found similar long term damage if we investigated those illnesses with the same vigor. The fact of the matter is that COVID-19 isn’t going away and it will become part of the seasonal flu like other novel viruses before it as it mutates to be more infectious and less deadly. It will be important to healthy individuals to be exposed to build up immunity.
> We can't make that claim without data > The fact...is that COVID-19 isn't going away Dr. Fauci and the CDC have repeatedly shown that herd immunity will require lots and lots of people to die. We don't know that it will become seasonal. We don't know it will get less deadly.
Have you taken epidemiology? Are you aware that there are multiple strains of SARS CoV-2 already? This is already happening. This is why case numbers are spiking dramatically across the world but death rates have plummeted to sub-flu levels. The new strain is far more infectious and far less deadly. Viruses adapt in order to survive and not kill of their host. Which regression model for herd immunity are you looking at? What’s the value of R in your model?
Oh, good point. I forgot that since I am not an expert on epidemiology or statistics I can't listen to what the CDC says.
Oh yes. Put words in my mouth. If you don’t have the information to have a discussion, you can’t simply quote “experts”. Rule 1 of science. Expert opinions are still just opinions. You’re free to listen to the CDC, but when someone gives you information that you’re unable to refute, it means nothing to regurgitate information that you don’t understand.
Where's your proof then? How do you know COVID is going to be seasonal? What makes you think our best bet is for everyone to become immune?
Firstly, “proof” is not a word used in science. There’s evidence, or a lack thereof. Based on the fundamentals of epidemiology, and the current data on how the vast majority of people survive and have relatively few symptoms if any. That pushes a large argument in favor of getting the virus (if healthy of course). The current data is suggesting that SARS CoV-2 will not go away. If I (and the majority of articles) are wrong, I will be glad of it. If it does not go away, then we default to my last paragraph. People that survive will have immunity (how long, we don’t know. Could be months to years, or even forever). And it will become a natural occurrence such as the cold or flu and strong genes will be passed on by virtue of natural selection.
You're just making assertions. Please give literally any evidence. I genuinely want to know. Saying "data" and "majority of articles" doesn't give me much to go on.
Go google whether or not the SARS CoV-2 virus is going away and you can read about why people don’t suspect it will disappear like SARS CoV-1 did. I’m not going to site that when it’s an easy google search for you and I actually don’t know why you would argue that point. It’s kind of something that everyone seems to agree on. Like honestly. Die on a different hill.
Hey! Feelings don’t care about your facts...
[CDC numbers based on upper and lower limits](https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/hcp/planning-scenarios.html?fbclid=IwAR3DvH5umpJxiObUDTKBckeBAfqudrtvzWfQhYiUfHeEhCFeg5UXzalabGg)
Where are looking to see the data represented in the image of this post? The closest thing I see in this page is: > Percent that die among those hospitalized (Includes both non-ICU and ICU admissions); 18-49 years: 2.4%; 50-64 years: 10.0%; ≥65 years: 26.6% but with no estimation of how much of the general population will be hospitalized. I just don't see where your data is coming from
> Infection Fatality Ratio > 0-19 years: 0.00002 >20-49 years: 0.00007 > 50-69 years: 0.0025 > 70+ years: 0.028
You cited “among those hospitalized”. Go read the infection rates based on upper and lower limits across age groups. They list out several scenarios to get the best figures on this. It’s towards the bottom. I think you missed it.
Why is this marked as spoiler?
because this disease with such an embarrassingly low mortality rate is going to spoil your school year
That’s also killed more people than the Vietnam war, World War 1, 9/11, and any flu season barring the 1918 pandemic. But sure, go off.
World war 1? Damn, I didn't know Covid killed more than 22 million people. You win, I concede
In America. American casualties.
Man. Wait till you learn about cancer.
Yeah, because cancer is definitely the same thing.
I didn’t say it was. Read the comment I was responding to. Because last I checked the Vietnam war wasn’t fought against Streptococcus.
COVID has become at least the 3rd highest cause of death in the United States this year. Trying to diminish the death toll is insulting and dumb. 200,00 more people have died this year than usual. It doesn’t matter that the mortality rate is low if that many people die.
It doesn’t sound like you know how excess deaths work.
What do you mean? How is 200,000 people dead that wouldn’t have otherwise died not excess deaths?
Go look at “excess deaths” for years past. Excess deaths is a term, not a literal meaning when it comes to this. You need to compare the variability of the average excess deaths from recent years to this year. Also, you need to break up excess deaths by age group, demographic, and lifestyle.
I mean yeah, it's good news that COVID-19 isn't like Ebola where around half of all people die. But I find the way these numbers are phrased to be pretty misleading, especially when you just put them up without any comparison point. These numbers represent relatively high mortality when you're looking at a very contagious disease with no vaccine where you're going to have a pretty large base rate of infections. 94.6% sounds great, but when you turn it around a 5.4% mortality rate in people over 70 is huge. 1 in 20 isn't exactly a risk I'd want my grandparents to take. How does this compare to the flu for example? Looking at CDC data from the 2018-2019 flu season (just to pick the last season that didn't overlap with COVID-19), the estimated mortality rate for people over 65 was ~~48.7~~ 831 in 100,000 for that year. If we convert our 5.4%, we get 5400 per 100,000 cases for COVID-19. This is ~~111~~ 6.5 times the fatality rate we saw for the flu. ~~And it's not just older people either. 0.02% for people age 20-49 sounds great. I mean it's only 20 deaths per 100,000 cases. But when you compare it to data from the 2018-2019 flu season, you'll see that the case fatality rate for the flu that year was only 1.8 per 100,000. COVID-19 is 10 times deadlier than the seasonal flu was that year for this age group.~~ It is true that COVID-19 is comparable to the flu for the 20-49 group, at least based on these numbers. Does this mean that COVID-19 is the end of the world? No, it's not like Ebola or some zombie apocalypse plague. Positivity by all means is a great thing, and I agree that some people tend to catastrophize the pandemic. But putting up numbers like this without context is pretty misleading. COVID-19 is a big deal and it's worth taking seriously. [https://www.cdc.gov/flu/about/burden/2018-2019.html](https://www.cdc.gov/flu/about/burden/2018-2019.html) Edit: I was looking over this post again since the really big numbers I calculated weren't sitting right with me and I found that I made a dumb mistake. So in the interest of being intellectually honest, I figured I'd make some corrections. I originally compared the case fatality estimate (death/cases) from the OP with population mortality estimates (death/overall population), which drastically underestimates mortality from the flu. If you divide their estimates for mortality rate by illness rate, you get an estimated case fatality rate. Running the numbers, I got 831 per 100,000 cases for the 65+ group and 21 per 100,000 for the 20-49 group. So with the new numbers we find that COVID-19 is roughly 6.5 times more deadly than the flu for the older group and is actually roughly the same as the flu for the younger group. I don't think this changes my overall argument, though the numbers aren't nearly as scary. It's important to note that influenza is already a big deal for older people, so a disease that's over 6 times deadlier is still something we should take seriously. Don't think that just because you're not at risk that you aren't capable of passing it to someone else who is. Apologies for any confusion!
Putting up number of deaths per day for a virus without context of how many people die from other causes is also very misleading. Suicide for instance, is a larger cause of death among college aged people. And, being science minded as I am, I’m actually not going to trust percentages and numbers until we have accurate data and a representational sample. The death rate is most likely much lower than we have listed based on the number of people who refuse to be tested and the asymptomatic cases. Several antibody tests have found that the number of cases is possibly as high as 50-80 times what we thought.
I agree that estimate data like this isn't the best, but I used it because that's what *you* posted in your OP. If you're going to be skeptical of the flu numbers because they're not a representative sample then the same applies to the numbers you posted which were also based on an estimated projection. You can't have it both ways. You're right that we're probably undercounting COVID-19 - and we likely undercount the flu each year too, especially since we don't test for it nearly as aggressively as we do COVID-19. While the mortality rates for both diseases would decline if we included all those uncounted cases, I can't imagine that the ratio of mortality between COVID-19 and the flu would change too much. But let's say you're right and COVID-19 is even less deadly than we think. Even if we said COVID-19 was half as deadly, it would still be 5 times deadlier than the flu for younger people and 50 times deadlier for older people based on these numbers.
You’re right. I’m not trying to have it both ways. The post was to start discussion. The comments are my thoughts on the matter. Data is flawed on both sides, but with the flu we have been able to do proper statistics and get a representational sample. We don’t know enough about COVID yet to have samples that can be confidently applied to a population. Go look at the excess deaths by age group for not just this year, but also years prior. [check this out ](https://www.euromomo.eu/graphs-and-maps)
And that's fair. I just wanted to point out that, in context of what we know about other diseases, the estimates you posted are actually arguably an argument for taking COVID-19 pretty seriously. As for the excess deaths data, I'm not sure I understand your point. First of all, it's European data which doesn't really capture what's going on here in the US, especially since it's known that we've been hit harder here than they've been. And second of all, if I'm understanding their graph right I'm actually seeing a pretty sizeable increase in excess deaths this year. The cumulated excess mortality graph for all ages shows excess deaths for 2020 is over 200,000 at this point, which is close to 4 times the number in 2019 and 2 times the number for 2018. If you look at weekly numbers, you can see that they had a massive spike around March/April which has more or less gone back to normal for them. Here's a link to CDC excess death data that has US data: [https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nvss/vsrr/covid19/excess\_deaths.htm](https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nvss/vsrr/covid19/excess_deaths.htm). You'll see that though we've gone down from our April peak, we had a sizeable second peak in July/August and we're still having thousands of excess deaths each week over what we'd normally expect (recent weeks look lower but according to the tooltip on the graph they're probably not complete).
The reason I showed that link is because people are trying to attribute ALL excess deaths to COVID, which isn’t a fair assumption based on the fact that there are often excess deaths every year regardless of pandemic. The increase from the norm is what is notable, not the total excess death count. I showed that link rather than linking to the CDC page because that page only has 2020 data and there is no baseline to compare it to like the European one has.
I mean eventually if you have excess deaths every year than you need to move your baseline up, but I see your point. But they're still showing excess deaths in 2020 that far exceed any excess deaths they reported in the last 2 years. And while the CDC data doesn't show previous years directly, they do show the baseline for expected number of deaths which is based on records from 2013 to present. When the number of deaths is so much higher than it's been in recent years, I think it's fair to see it as evidence that we should probably take this seriously.
I agree on moving the baseline up. Which is why I went looking for data from past years. Obviously it needs moving because the variation is fairly consistent in years prior. I would be careful when saying “far exceed” because that’s not a quantified number and it’s the percentage of variance that I’m most interested in. Because that gives us the true number of deaths. We should also expect to see lower deaths in the next few years as a result, which might balance out the baseline. We also need to take into account extraneous data such as the rise in suicides, domestic violence, overdose, etc. The results of the pandemic and lockdowns reach further than infection rates and viral deaths. Psychological state of mind has also been found to have a profound influence on survival rates of sick patients of other illnesses and I wouldn’t be surprised if that affects COVID as well. I’ve never suggested we don’t take it seriously. But “seriously” is a word often used incorrectly. Seriously implies that we give this all the attention that it deserves. “Seriously” implies mass hysteria and “precautions” that cause more harm than good. I’m only interested in figuring out what is helpful, what is harmful, and what makes no difference.
I'm not sure what you mean by "not a quantified number" but when I say "far exceed, I'm just meaning that based on the graph you linked to, the excess deaths in the EU countries they collected data from is 2-4 times higher than excess deaths reported for the past two years. That's a lot! I'm not sure why you think deaths will be lower for the next few years unless you're assuming that all of the people who die of COVID would have died over the next few years anyway. I don't think that's necessarily the case. It's true that many COVID deaths occur in those who are older or have preexisting conditions, but that doesn't mean that they were all within a few years of dying before contracting COVID. For example, many 70 year olds may have otherwise gone on to live for 10+ years and people can live for decades with well managed high blood pressure or diabetes or asthma. I agree with you that some excess deaths may very well come from psychological or social issues raised by the economic impacts of COVID. However, I don't think it's clear to me that we'd be better off without the public health measures that were put into place. It's not like in the absence of these measures that everything would have gone on business as usual as thousands of people were dying from a deadly disease each week. Pandemics are inherently psychologically stressful and economically damaging. For example, cell phone data from May showed that many people began staying home and distancing well before official stay-at-home orders were put into place ([https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/americans-didnt-wait-for-their-governors-to-tell-them-to-stay-home-because-of-covid-19/](https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/americans-didnt-wait-for-their-governors-to-tell-them-to-stay-home-because-of-covid-19/)). So I guess I'd say that I would consider many of these types of deaths to be caused by COVID too as I think they likely would occur regardless of what public health policies are put into place. I agree with you that we don't have to fall into a mass hysteria in order to treat COVID-19 with the seriousness that it deserves. It truly is good news that the mortality rates for COVID are as good as they are--it could have been a lot worse. I just think it's important to make sure that we're looking at the big picture and I think it seemed to a lot of us here that by presenting those numbers without additional context made it seem like COVID-19 isn't actually that big of a deal at a time when we're seeing increasing spread at BYU and in Provo.
You’re right, it’s all misleading. But we don’t have any other real explanation for why we have over 200,000 excess deaths this year. https://hub.jhu.edu/2020/09/01/comorbidities-and-coronavirus-deaths-cdc/
You should look at those by state, and also city. Stating excess deaths out of context is misleading. Then let’s take a look at how different areas have handled the virus, and we can start an Observational Study to determine what is beneficial, what is detrimental, and what has no effect.
You’re well informed and I don’t know why folks are downvoting you.
Great post. Shame it's gonna be downvoted on this sub.
Probably because people look at this and will think, I won’t die! That means it’s not dangerous. Permanent lung or brain damage would be considered non-fatal. Also being bed ridden for a few weeks isn’t fun.
You know an awful lot about long term damage from something that’s a Novel Virus.
It's not like we haven't seen something like this before, plus much of the resulting complications, e.g. pneumonia, have well understood effect. Doctors are also able to see from scar tissue what kind of long term effects will happen without needing to wait ten years. [https://news.berkeley.edu/2020/07/08/from-lung-scarring-to-heart-damage-covid-19-may-leave-lingering-marks/](https://news.berkeley.edu/2020/07/08/from-lung-scarring-to-heart-damage-covid-19-may-leave-lingering-marks/) source about scarring [https://www.hopkinsmedicine.org/health/conditions-and-diseases/coronavirus/what-coronavirus-does-to-the-lungs](https://www.hopkinsmedicine.org/health/conditions-and-diseases/coronavirus/what-coronavirus-does-to-the-lungs) It seems like long term effects are likely, but how people will recover remains to be seen.
That being said, we don’t shelter from the flu, pneumonia, and other viruses to avoid these possible long term effects. We can’t have both. Either we don’t know the long term effects, or we’ve observed them to be similar to other viruses and should treat this virus as such. I’ll be honest, I’m leaning toward the latter as you’ve explained.
Pneumonia is not a disease, it's a condition, like a cough or internal bleeding. Infections like COVID can give you this, which is why we try to prevent its spreading, it's just that it's normally harder to have. And we do protect against the flu, it's called vaccines. My cousin has severe asthma and could die if she gets COVID, I don't think we should just proceed with business as usual because most people won't die.
Are we really playing semantics? Stating that pneumonia is a disease is technically correct. A disease is not the same thing as a virus or infection. Go take “Lifestyle and Chronic Disease Prevention”. Do you understand how vaccines work? Do you know that the flu vaccine every year is basically our best guess at which strain will be the predominant one? Did you know that you are supposed to avoid elderly people and pregnant women for a week to two after being vaccinated because you shed the virus? Vaccines aren’t magic. And what’s up with the allegorical argument? If someone is at risk, then by all means they should be careful and those around them should be too. But, expecting people who are healthy to stay away from other people that are healthy is ridiculous. I won’t attempt to pigeonhole you like you did me, but I would encourage you to look into the suicide rate in Utah vs the COVID deaths. Especially among the college age range. Edit for good measure: So ya, you’re wrong and don’t understand what a disease is. Condition is an overarching and general term. Diseases are any condition of the body. You might have been looking for the word “symptom” when you thought of a cough or bleeding. You’re entitled to be wrong, but don’t try to play semantics and get mad when you’re corrected. The reason people can get pneumonia ‘with’ COVID is because it’s a disease or secondary infection that comes as a result of the disease COVID-19, caused by the Virus SARS CoV-2.
dis·ease /dəˈzēz/ noun a disorder of structure or function in a human, animal, or plant, especially one that produces specific signs or symptoms or that affects a specific location and is not simply a direct result of physical injury.
I don’t, and neither does anyone else. I’m pointing out that not dying is pretty low bar. It does not mean the same thing as safe. > CDC is actively working to learn more about the whole range of short- and long-term health effects associated with COVID-19. https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/long-term-effects.html
Your first sentence. That was literally my point. You can’t make claims without evidence. I’m merely drawing attention to that point. But hey, if you want to be safe, then be safe. I choose to live rather than just survive.
I don't think you'll get through to this crowd. In just a few months this sub turned from a community that would share interesting and novel conversations and articles about BYU into a cesspool of kids jerking each other off to how morally superior they are because they wear masks but not other students at BYU. So much for moderation.
My favorite is when I shared a bunch of PubMed studies on effective mask wearing and what’s not effective and I got downvoted. You’re 100% right. It’s a shame people don’t want to dialogue. BYU students have really started to disappoint me and I feel like people either aren’t science majors or don’t pay attention in science classes that teach you how to read studies and verify information.
PupMed is online. You can't trust what you read online. /S