This whole thing stinks to high heaven. At most so far 59 people have died, with most of them being in one nursing home in Kirkland WA. The media is fear mongering harder than ever to make orange man look bad. Schools and businesses are closing which is sure to send us into recession if not worse. Out of 330,000,000 people, 59 have died in the US and everything is screeching to a halt. Something isn't right here but it's fucking everything up. The economy was the best it's ever been in the history of our country and now everything is going to shit because of less than 100 deaths. More people probably die each year from skiing accidents. This is un fucking believable.
EDIT: I'm not saying this is a total hoax. I'm saying the media overreaction is making things way worse than they have to be. Panicking is never going to make anything better. If this is truly as bad as some of you are saying, I hope it justifies sending our economy into great depression 2 Corona boogaloo
No, this is not less lethal than the flu. It is the flu. The reason coronavirus is more lethal than the common flu is what happens afterward. The SARS line of viruses are extremely good at attacking your immune cells inside your respiratory tract. So the flu itself is not what kills you. It's your body's natural ability to fight off bateria that the virus is killing. That is what pneumonia is caused by - bacteria - and it's very hard to come back once you have severe pneumonia. Also the elderly are much less likely to fight it off. So "just the flu" is a very misleading and dangerous statement to make about SARS line of viruses. The reason coronaavirus is SARS ON CRACK is because it can spread like wildfire before any symptoms arise. Thus every person can theoretically be infecting 100 other people before they even have a single symptom. This is called exponential growth and if you know anything about exponents, it means if we don't stop it now eventually everyone will catch it within a few months.
edit: Recommend reading replies that are schooling me on what I said above, which I will be learning from. Thanks
I think that's the point of this freakout - it's too late to stop it. There's a diseases that can incubate for two weeks without symptoms and then suddenly onset to cause so real damage? Yeah - good luck containing that.
It may be too late to stop it, but it's not too late to SLOW IT DOWN.
Slowing it down could mean the difference between life and death for those that will become critically ill after contracting this virus.
We don't have the excess ICU space (about 95K beds, about 2/3rds already in use) to handle a sudden influx of critically ill patients.
Don’t get me wrong - I’m not advocating that we don’t try and slow the spread, but we need to manage some realistic expectations.
It’s going to get everywhere. For many - myself included - hunkering down at home for a few weeks isn’t an option. I’m the sole income for a wife and three kids, so I’ll find work when my employer decides not to pay me a free “vacation.” Multiply my situation by every other similar circumstance and we’ve got a huge problem.
You don't have to hunker down at home for a few weeks. Only Italy has mandated it, so far. Other countries have only closed restaurants, bars, etc.
If we can slow down the spread by curtailing VOLUNTARY activities, then we can avoid the kind of disruption European countries are implementing.
That's being realistic.
China has more or less contained it, and if China can do it, so can we.
I don't believe a thing that comes out of China.
It's probably worse over there than we are lead to believe.
Found the Chinese Reddit bot!
Don't believe a fucking thing Chyna says.
China didn’t try to #FlattenTheCurve.
They just quarantined some cities and let if flame out in a burst of glory to get it over with. Notice how all Apple stores have already reopened in China? “Flattening the curve” with social distance will indeed likely lower the number of cases contracted, but not enough to significantly ease any hospital resource shortages enough. It will also greatly prolong the negative economic effects.
China was actually smart in my opinion in letting it essentially burn itself out in a blaze of glory. They’re already getting back to normal.
https://flattenthecurve.herokuapp.com/
I think the point though is that its only potentially fatal to a very small percentage of people - there is no vaccone or cure, and the virus is already here. Shutting everything down to the point people are losing their 401ks is asinine when all we're doing is prolonging the inevitable, that without a vax everyone is eventually going to get it. And said vax could take years, or maybe even never be created.
The point is, go about your life, be smart and if you feel sick don't go near elderly people until youre better.
You bet your ass it will, this is a great time to make some money while the market is down. It will go sky high soon enough.
First-time investor because of everything going down in price.
Flattening the curve will literally prolong the economic shutdown by months, maybe even up until around Election Day. You don’t want basically everything shutdown and self-quarantined for all of spring, summer, and a bit of autumn.
It's not just elderly people at risk. Anyone with a compromised immune system is at risk, and that includes people on immunosuppresants like Enbrel, Humira, and Talz.
If you're not feeling well, please stay home. Your neighbor or co-worker may be on immunosuppressants, and you'd never know.
It's smart because we can slow the spread of the virus. This gives us more time to ramp up testing and protocols to fight it. The more experience we have dealing with this disease the more we can lower the death rate. Its also believed that the virus cannot survive very hot weather . If we make it to june/july without severe community spread we will be okay, and the economy we rebound bigly.
Well if you want to mince words, the flu is caused by influenza.
The SARS line of viruses uses the alveolar epithelial type II cells (ACE2) as a target. It does not attack immune cells directly. If you heard that somewhere, it probably evolved from the "OMG ITZ LIKE HIV" bullshit rumor that was spreading around.
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s00134-020-05985-9
Just like the flu, the elderly are most likely to die from dehydration, whilst being slightly more at risk for uncommon complications.
This is every respiratory disease. Flu is 1-4 days. Original SARS is up to 14 days. Please stop sipping the Kool-aid:
https://www.medicinenet.com/severe_acute_respiratory_syndrome_sars/article.htm
Lecturing a scientist on "exponential growth" is not going to win you any bonus points. Especially when the basic MOA of the disease is completely foreign to you.
Support your argument with actual data and try again. In the meantime, I'm going home. Work on a Sunday is bullshit.
If you knew anything about epidemiology, you wouldn't make that statement. Look up Farr's Law.
Or ask yourself: why has the virus already peaked in China, which has 1 billion people and a far higher rate of exposure?
China did extensive and thorough quarantines. We don’t have that here to nearly the same extent.
Yeah, they only quarantined after massive exposure, yet still....it peaked.
China totally botched the quarantines. That's the truth. They let it spread unchecked for two months - including letting 5 million people out of wuhan and then decided to clamp down like crazy to compensate.
But that is not the best approach.. China is trying to seem superior to the West but they are not..
I mean it’s past peak in China and they’re already getting back to “normal” so...
Even after the botched job, they still managed to contain the disease. That’s why I don’t get why people here seem to think widespread community spreading is inevitable. China isn’t superior to the West, so there’s no reason we can’t contain it.