2019-2020 coronavirus pandemic (Vaccination 2021 Edition)
- Thread starter McElroy
- Start date
It has thus far been clearly better to have a bunch of restrictions in place and have people follow them. Unprepared people even outside the US spread the disease too quickly for the healthcare system to keep up. The concern now (at least here in Finland and maybe other places with a similar covid situation) is that the situation is the same as in early March. The threat of infection is localized and people are starting to be at ease. Most restrictions are no longer in place and healthcare workers have the resources to focus also on the infection chains so spread can be reduced. Then there are the negative Nigels and Nancys that don't trust people to follow instructions, and thus they demand the restrictions back and in a way that people are affected as evenly as possible. They have a good reason to fear shit re-hitting the fan. If it does we kinda have to do the restriction mess again even if society is more prepared.
And yeah, the price of all this. Each DALY (disability-adjusted life year) that covid treatments have saved has an estimated cost of half a million euros. The social cost on top of that, the economic cost too. A super tough disease control for all individuals can't happen here and neither can a full-throttle sweep on one part of the population while the compromised are treated unfairly. You can't rally everyone for a rational course of action, and so a consensus is a must. What might end up happening is all the options but in a longer time frame. A vaccine maybe changes the game, because a "new normal" where we are constantly afraid of a new outbreak is out of the question.
I felt it was a nice little recap of the evolution of the virus. It also provides some nice info about why you shouldn't really be worried about the virus mutating into something that would wipe all our work towards a vaccine. I'm not 100% sure if both strains are technically considered different strains as the current virus is still very similar to genetically to the initial sequence.
You keep claiming "the sky is falling" when it really isn't. You said people will have to be wearing hazmat suits to work and that there was already 10+ strains like a month or so back. It's been shown that super simple guidelines like Japan's just wear masks and cut human interactions by 80% can work (as Japan is not able to do what say South Korea is doing with regards to testing and tracing). You just posted how there's all these undiagnosed conditions in the US but the US is in line with other countries when it comes to death rates among age groups. Sure, if you really get into the numbers, the US death rates might be a bit higher since we are unhealthier compared to a lot of other developed countries. However, the death rates aren't significantly higher in the US. Where in the US are you that you can't go into a store and buy masks? I live on the border of Illinois/Indiana (in Chicagoland) where Illinois has a mask mandate and Indiana will this Monday, not a single person is complaining that they can't get a mask. A guy at work literally went out during work and bought a 50-pack of masks at Walgreens (and immediately regretted it after putting on the 1st mask). If people in the US had legit complaints against mask mandates like not being able to get them, why are all the anti-mask people making up dumb as fuck reasons when they have a perfectly legit reason, according to you, staring them right in the face?
Sure, the US has tons of problems like how idiotic it is to have health insurance tied to employment when a pandemic literally shows how tons of people will be laid off during it and losing health insurance when you need it the most. And, there's obviously all the systemic issues that are currently being protested. The governmental leadership with regards to the virus has also been shit when all you had to tell the public was a couple simple guidelines to follow and not flip-flop on it either like how even Fauci didn't advise masks at the start due to anticipated PPE shortages. We are really lucky in how weak the virus is in actuality because the response by both the government and public has been a joke in the US. The other day getting lunch at White Castle, a guy asked the cashier why the dining room wasn't open.
I'm not sure what's worse, that the guy asked that question or that you were in a White Castle to hear it.
USA
First of all please do not dismiss the very real fact that we are pushing 150k deaths in the US right now and countless others with long lasting damage and are due to have a hell of a lot more when they open schools as they currently have planned for August as " the sky is falling" BS, as that is actually a pretty F'd up thing to do considering the very real impact this is having on everyone's lives here. Second, we currently do have numerous strains that are constantly mutating, of course most mutations are not as harmful, but that can change at any given time as we currently do not have this virus anywhere near under control. I, unlike you, have actually worked with viruses , that is why I, along with most of the other immunologists, epidemiologists and virologists in this world share the same concerns here while you armchair Youtube your way through this with old, partial information.
I said they would need to wear hazmat suits in order to avoid infection while working in the current conditions, which has been shown to be an accurate assessment considering even those wearing hazmat suits still managed to contract the virus anyways at the meat packing plants. The virus is currently completely out of control in the US, even though we have had vulnerable populations isolating since March, and due to the horrific mismanagement, we are not seeing an end to this here and those vulnerable who have been putting everything on hold are running out of time here. I am in the DFW metroplex. We are out of everything here in stores, including much of our food. There is no lysol, isobutyl alcohol, effective respirators that actually protect the vulnerable populations, sure ineffective surgical masks are handed out at the stores, though not on the shelves, but those are meant to protect others from you, where are the N95 respirators that were easily available prior to the pandemic that are needed to protect the vulnerable populations when they have to go to their regular doctors appointments necessary for them to survive the conditions they already have? Where are the N95 respirators that the local clinics need here that they currently cannot even obtain due to them being on back order? This many months in, Trump should have made more than enough for the clinics and the vulnerable populations by now, but due to his sheer incompetency, none of that has happened yet. We are still suffering from severe shortages. Sure, the healthy person can likely get away with wearing a surgical mask so they can protect others, but those with suppressed immune systems, RA in their lungs and COPD cannot. They actually need something that protects the user, yet they have no way to access these things. Just google 3m n95 and you will see how easy it is to get your hands on an actual respirator. Don't be fooled by the cheap fake kn95 masks that do nothing to protect the user, they are not worth the paper they are printed on. The actual masks are rigid, not soft and do not have all the little holes punched in them.
The current situation for the vulnerable populations is that they are being denied access to what they need to survive this in combination with being forced into situations that will directly expose them. Without easy access to disinfectants and actual protective equipment meant to protect the user, the vulnerable populations will not even be able to receive the necessary medical treatments they were already receiving prior to the pandemic in order to stay alive here. People have been putting off their cancer treatments, heart surgeries and they are currently on borrowed time here. It isn't like they can wait forever to be able to receive treatments, and without actual PPE, it is not safe for them to even go to the doctors office and clinics to be able to do so.
Just in case you missed it this is where we are at now:
Spike in COVID-19 cases causes shortage in goods including soup, flour and pasta
During the early weeks of the coronavirus crisis, grocers ran low on goods like toilet...
H-E-B Limits Paper, Sanitation Purchases as Coronavirus Worsens in Texas
Several items not being accepted for return.
spectrumlocalnews.com
Paying the Price for PPE
www.texmed.org
Grave Shortages of Protective Gear Flare Again as Covid Cases Surge (Published 2020)
Five months into the pandemic, the U.S. still hasn’t solved the problem. The dearth of supplies is affecting a broad array of health facilities, renewing pleas for White House intervention.
:watermark(cdn.texastribune.org/media/watermarks/2020.png,-0,30,0)/static.texastribune.org/media/files/44f4376a234432fa1f65bd85f0f3f834/DHR%20COVID%20Ward%20Edinburg%20MG%20TT%2010)
Texas hospitals are running out of drugs, beds, ventilators and even staff
Many Texas hospitals are no longer accepting transfer patients in order to maintain space for a surge that’s expected to come. In some parts of the state, it’s already here.
www.texastribune.org
Hand Sanitizer, Disinfectant Demands Hit 'Biblical Proportions'
Disinfectants and hand sanitizers remain hard to find at U.S. retailers, despite four months of emergency measures from the EPA and FDA to boost production, with supply chains maxed out by a still-raging pandemic.
And you seem to think I am saying " the sky is falling" because we are trying to open schools right in the middle of this when what we actually need is another shut down to get some sort of control over this? If this was so weak, we would not be looking 150K people dead from this and counting right now and countless others with severe organ damage and life long disability. Not all of us with suppressed immune systems are ready to die right now because other people were stupid enough to elect a moron who is trying to get us killed here and we have countless other morons refusing to do what it takes to actually slow the spread.
Haha, we were really pushing time for lunch that day and White Castle is the only place that's in the same plaza as us (without getting on the main roads). How long it took to get our orders, we probably could've drove a bit to Jimmy Johns and got food and got back in about the same time.
I'm not dismissing anything. I'm pointing out that the virus is most likely going to have a death rate well under 1% when you get all the numbers. The anti-body surveys were already saying that at least 10x more people have gotten it than the official numbers are stating. And now they are seeing that many people that get really mild symptoms or that are asymptomatic don't really produce the anti-bodies like others and can test as not already getting it (and being immune) when getting the anti-body test so the infections are probably even higher than what we are estimating with the anti-body surveys meaning the death rate keeps dropping the more people you find that were infected that we didn't know were infected. What I'm saying is we are really pretty lucky because if this virus killed 5% or 10% or more while not being nice to younger people, the situation would be way way worse.
The virus does not have numerous strains, even the 2 main strains could be agrued as not being different strains (as the term has subjectivity to it). And, we shouldn't be worried that the currently being worked on vaccines won't work when they become publicly available. Sure, the scientists should be researching every possibility but chances of not being able to have a working vaccine are really low.
The non-health effects the virus is having is definitely a bigger issue right now. A third of people in the US missed their housing payments in July. For children, going back to school is most likely safer for them, the problem is it most likely isn't safe for the teachers to be in school. Also, I have 3 friends that are teachers and none of them are going back to school as normal and my area is doing OK-decent with regards to the virus so I doubt worse areas are even contemplating going back to school. I know Trump has said that he wants schools open like normal but I haven't really seen any school districts that are actually going to be doing that, not that I looked super into it. And all these issues that aren't directly related to the virus harming people's health have been greatly exacerbated by the shitshow that is US response to the pandemic.
Other countries have shown that you just need simple common sense guidelines to win the battle against the virus, and you don't need some top-notch testing and tracing like South Korean has. You shouldn't need workers in hazmat suits, you shouldn't need old people wearing n95 masks, etc.
Let's worry about the deadly global pandemic killing hundreds of thousands in record time first, why don't we. The school is on fire and you want to talk bullying.
Counterpoint: If we have to buck ourselves up by saying, "Well, at least this pandemic only attacks your cardio-pulminary system, can create horrific lung tissue scarring and increases your chance of fatal strokes. If it also gave you singing genital zits, then we'd really be screwed!" then that means we're not doing a great job containing the situation.
Nothing wrong with trying to find the positive things to latch onto this dark time. Still, we should maintain a realistic eye about here and now in which the pandemic is very much out of our control and we cannot count on a concerted response from the federal government because the stumblefuck imbecile in the Oval Office is too busy having the sads over low poll numbers.
If you ever needed a stark example of why narcissism is a personality disorder, it's the fact that people like Trump who crave respect and admiration can't quite get their heads around the fact that one great way to get them is by doing a good job. Instead they self-sabotage, because they get stuck in petty resentments, insecurity and craving ostentatious and superficial displays of affection.
We currently do not know how long or how effective protective immunity will last at this point, it is far too soon to tell. Even with a vaccine and there is still a high probability that we will require a seasonal vaccine, rather than the vaccine or immunity gained from exposure to the virus being long term although the vaccine should provide a longer immune response than that gained from infection alone. The non health effects are directly tied to the incompetent federal government response. People are losing their homes due to the lack of proper relief funding due to government's own bumbling. If the Federal government just had a hard lockdown for all states for the 18 days while simultaneously providing citizens with the resources they need to combat the virus and survive the income loss, we would be in a much better place right now. The longer this goes unchecked, the worse the financial impact. The states tried to just reopen without taking the necessary steps to safely do so and the results have been disastrous. The primary reason we have had a reduction in the mortality rate is that the vast majority of vulnerable populations have not left isolation since March. They have never stopped isolating, but they will be forcefully exposed when schools reopen, and that will definitely greatly increase the death toll at that time. Schools here are stating they are still planning opening on campus In August in one of the hardest hit regions in the US in Texas. Hell, they are even requiring that students choosing virtual learning will still be required to come on campus for for various courses as well as labs and other activities, so they will necessarily still be exposing their households even when they are doing everything they can to try and keep them safe. Republican states still seem to be on board with tying school funding to on campus learning as Trump has been pressuring them to do and many districts cannot afford to lose that funding. This will affect the more vulnerable schools moreso than others due to those districts already being underfunded due to those areas also being the lower income districts. The schools are being forced to reopen in the worst areas here when they really should be delaying right now.
State officials: Public schools must reopen campuses in August, with few exceptions
Families wanting in-person instruction must have that option available to them, unless...
TBH, all schools would be better off having a " gap year" and taking a break so that when all students come back they would all be in the same place where they left off while having the government subsidize funding for those households so they will comfortably survive this instead of creating a cluster F that is going to completely screw over so many students and graduates and their families. Everyone would be in the same place and no one would be left behind if this was done universally. It only works if everyone doe it though. So many are losing the best moments in their life due to this. Kids spend their whole lives looking forward to their senior year of High School, going off to college, and now all of those who are doing so during this are really getting a raw deal here. Giving everyone a gap year would mean they actually get to enjoy it when they come back and have a better quality learning environment instead of having teachers spend their entire time just trying to keep the masks on the 6 year olds and never getting around to what they are supposed to be teaching, meanwhile, the kids in high school are missing their first kiss, their first dates because their parents are afraid to let them ever go anywhere or take their masks off. Forcing this garbled mess onto everyone is going to do far more damage than giving them a gap year would. People will necessarily die from this. That should not be considered an acceptable loss, as for those families affected, it is far from being an acceptable loss. Instead, we should be focused on protecting the people, especially the vulnerable, get them the resources they need and that is what will increase consumer confidence and build up the economy at the same time. As long as that isn't happening, the economy is only going to get worse. Getting the virus under control is key to stabilizing the economy.
You do realize that vulnerable populations were already wearing N95 masks to their physicians office prior to the pandemic right? We could walk into Walmart, the grocery store or any pharmacy and buy them off the shelves. When you have suppressed immune system, even catching a common cold can prove fatal, so this was already needed in order to survive. With a virus as transmissible as COVD-19, this is even more vital to survival. This isn't some new routine invented just for the pandemic, this was already a regular part of the daily lives of the vulnerable populations prior to this because it is necessary even without a pandemic present. The CDC only started recommending substandard and dangerous guidelines in the US because the government was ill equipped to provide the proper equipment that was required prior to the Pandemic. My peers in Germany are shocked they are allowing that to happen at all in the US and have even expressed they would refuse to do so over there. Let me put it like this, even when I worked with MSF in impoverished regions, we were provided with proper PPE in nations far poorer than the US. We did not reuse single use PPE in the US or with MSF prior to the pandemic, as it is not considered safe to do so. You claiming " we should not need N95 for the vulnerable populations" is ignorant to how this actually works here. Those most vulnerable are the people who need it most. The reason we need workers in hazmat suits in the US is due to the poor environments they are forced to work in. A surgical mask is not going to protect you from infection while working at a meat packing plant or in a factory on the line. A surgical mask does not actually offer any protection to the user, it only limits the area of transmission around them, and still offers little protection for others for indoor spaces, or for exposure over 15 minutes. A good way to gauge if you have a proper mask on that will offer some protection is to make sure it is securely fitted and light a match. When you have a proper mask on you should not be able to smell the match, even if it is next to your nose. If you can smell the match, you are not protected. Vulnerable populations need actual protection, otherwise they will be exposed in the environments they necessarily have to exist in in order to receive the medical treatments necessary for their survival for their other conditions. walking through common areas in medical facilities, sitting in waiting rooms at hospitals, clinics and doctors offices is also the primary place that vulnerable populations have to be able to survive and those areas are also the most dangerous even in good times, let alone a pandemic. Due to medical facilities also being overcapacity, this also increases the amount of time the vulnerable populations are sitting next to the guy coughing up lung sitting next to them in the waiting room. A paper surgical mask is going to do nothing to help in the situations that reality places people in here. I have no idea why you would think they should not need these necessary measures when they already have needed them for a very long time now prior to the pandemic. Why would they suddenly not need them now when this has already shown to highly transmissible and spread much farther distances than previously thought:
Coronavirus (COVID-19) Everything You Need to Know | Healthline
Live news & updates on the Coronavirus (COVID-19) outbreak
www.healthline.com
COVID 19 can spread through breathing, talking, study estimates
www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov
The data I have seen on this thus far showed that the virus was spread to aisles on both sides of the person talking at a standard supermarket as well as the aisle they were on, not just with a 6ft area. The data also showed that the virus is still spread with surgical mask on, just not as far. It can be spread from breathing alone, even with a mask on. All the surgical mask does is reduce the amount and the distance of the spread, but it does not eliminate it. This means that indoor areas are not safe, even with a mask, and for high risk groups not having access to PPE and disinfectants, that can prove to be lethal. As long as we are not providing protection, the economy will not improve.
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The worst part about it is his poll numbers and the economy would both be doing so much better right now if he had just done what was necessary in the first place instead of trying to pretend like it doesn't exist. Trump can convince his supporters of all sorts of crazy things, but when they are unemployed, sick and their loved ones are dead, he is going to have a hard time convincing them it is a hoax. Much of his support is among the elderly population, and those are also the largest portion of the population that is high risk here. Most elderly have family or friends who will become severely ill or die from this. Though nothing will phase the diehard Trumpers I suspect, their own family could die from this and they would still think it is a hoax.
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It's already chipping away at the edges of his base. He's trying to scare the shit out of seniors with threats of violent black people, but they're more immediately concerned with the planet-scarring plague currently rampaging through our population. And of course the witless orcs who went to "covid parties" and died a couple weeks later aren't doing anything to buoy Republican approval numbers.
What's most concerning is that there is enough of his base who are willing to die of illness in order to avoid ever admitting to making a bad decision to throw sand in the gears of all efforts to get this under control going forward. There are probably enough anti-vaxxers to diminish the effectiveness of a covid vaccine once it's available.
This is the consequence of espousing an individualistic mindset that every Johnny Fuckface Know-Nothing with an internet connection can become an expert in anything just by watching a lot of YouTube. That all experts are hacks and quacks, and anyone with education is too myopic to see the big picture as only a properly uneducated salt-of-the-earth American can. This is our cultural narcissism coming home to roost.
The absurd thing about this is all the people who had no previous issue with vaccines choosing to jump on the antivaxxer bandwagon for the first time DUE to the pandemic. It is bad enough that we were worried about even being able to create a vaccine that would be effective enough on it's own to obtain some herd immunity to help reduce the spread, but if not enough people actually get vaccinated in combination with the 75% expected effectiveness of the vaccines themselves, we will still be unable to get the virus under control even with the vaccine. They are reporting that only like 50% of the US population is stating they will get vaccinated when it is available, and that is no where near enough to get this where we need it to be. The sheer level of stupidity of " Ameerican excellence" has no bounds. I saw that interview with the man who became severely ill with COVID-19 twice stating that even though it almost killed him, his own son still thinks it is a hoax. Seriously, people really can be that dense. Even losing his own father to it would not make him understand it was real.
I'm just saying that in a vacuum of how deadly the virus by itself, it's not very deadly at all. For the majority of the population, car accidents have a greater chance of killing you than the virus. And that's assuming you actually get infected and not from bumping down the odds of dying from the virus because there's a decent chance you won't even get it (but the way it's going in America, everyone might just end up getting it). And, other countries have shown it doesn't take much to extremely limit the spread of the virus either. You don't need some top-notch testing and tracing system in place. I'm saying we're really lucky that the severity of the virus is as low as it is, the Spanish Flu was more deadly and also had the opposite effect on age where the young were hit hard and the older population was spared. I'm fully aware of the indirect effects of the pandemic very well could end up being extremely more harmful than the direct health impacts and the US is doing a complete shit job and only exacerbating a bad situation.
I'm not arguing about all the indirect issues the virus is causing, it's that you keep making claims that the virus itself is far more deadly than it is. There was nobody saying a vaccine wouldn't be possible, there was an ever-so-slight chance that a vaccine wouldn't work but that was extremely unlikely scenario. I recall you posting an article about how they found the virus on a surface (of cruise ship IIRC) weeks after it was emptied. A positive result for the virus doesn't mean it's in an infectious state either. RNA is neither dead or alive so inactive and active RNA of the virus will yield positive test results. We already know the virus is airborne (though there's subjectivity to that I believe) or transmitted through very fine/small droplets (which might not quite qualify it as airborne), but that's just semantics mainly. I recall awhile back there was an outbreak linked to a restaurant where half the customers got it due to the direction the AC was moving the air around the building. However, it's probably impossible to get it at a supermarket aisles away from someone that's infected because by the time the viral particles get there, they'll be too dispersed to cause an infection. You don't get infected just because a single viral molecule makes it into your body, you need X amount of it to get infected. Plus, supermarkets are much bigger spaces than restaurants with people constantly moving around so you're not going to be getting constant viral particles sent your way as you and the infected aren't going to be stationary for like an hour straight like having dinner at a restaurant.
The average age of death from the virus in most places is already in the 70s-80s. The vulnerable were not isolating when the virus first hit because nobody knew it was here yet. To say the death rate is going to raise because the vulnerable isolated isn't very accurate. And the most vulnerable in assisted living really can't isolate and are at the mercy of the guidelines at those facilities to keep the virus out. The death rate is going down over time because we are getting a better picture of how much it has spread as the official number is really just the tip of the iceberg. It doesn't help that the US is testing wrong.
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Why on earth are you talking about it as if we can only do one at a time? Why would that be the case?
Do you imagine that all work on environmental protection must cease while epidemiologists and biochemists work on the novel coronavirus? It just makes zero sense.
Thank you. That's what I was trying to get across. It's extremely frustrating that the media isn't studying this and treating it as a lesson, and it doesn't help that some contrarians will act like it's callous to bring it up when so many people have died. If we don't bring attention to this now, when we can see such a rapid change in direct relation to the quarantines, then when?
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Please show me your source that I am claiming that COVID-19 is more deadly than it is. When you go through my posts on this thread alone, I have repeatedly stated that we should not focus solely on the initial mortality rate here as the sheer number of people who have survived this at all ages are doing so with life long permanent damage to their lungs and other organs and that is a far greater concern. You are making a false claim here and ignoring the actual point I have been trying to get across this entire time. I survived a virus that was not as severe as COVID-19, but I did so with a portion of my lungs so heavily damaged that those parts of my lungs are now considered "dead". People who have survived SARS and MERS ALSO have this permanent lung damage and this is what we are finding to be the case among COVID-19 patients as well, even among the " mild cases". Many of those who survive this for now, it will still be what killed them later due to if their lungs and other organs had not become damaged from COVID-19 in the first place, they would not have developed complications from the cold, flu, strep or other seasonal illness at a later time. The permanent damage being done now will impact the rest of their lives, whether or not they realize it at the time. The damage being done is what will make them more susceptible to the pneumonia later that will eventually end their lives. You have to look at the chain of events set forth by this and the long term impact to understand why it is so vital that we even prevent the " mild illness". Even mild illness with COVID-19 is creating a lifelong impact that will affect people's survivability for the rest of their lives. That of course is in addition to those who are actually becoming permanently disabled over this.
Months after I survived my respiratory infection itself from a lesser virus, I developed pneumonia after having a common cold later due to the condition my lungs were left in from a much milder virus than this. Prior to that initial infection, I was a petite, healthy, fit, active young woman who traveled the world with my whole life ahead of me. Now I am an immune suppressed, temperature regulated asthmatic with large portions of my lung tissue essentially "dead" who is out of breath just walking from my bed to my kitchen. I require oxygen to exercise at all. I am in constant severe pain and this is only expected to get worse as I age. I am unable to go outside during normal hours because my body stops distributing oxygen to my cells properly at 70F and the power or air conditioning going out would mean I will die quickly. I have had Pneumonia so many times now my last mycoplasma test looked like that of a 90yr old woman, let alone someone who has not even reached middle age yet. Even prior to the pandemic, if I ate out at a restaurant or at a friend's home, I had to bring my own silverware and glasses to ensure they were properly sterilized to prevent infections that others are immune to due to the sheer number of times I have become ill now due to the shape I was left in after the damage by the virus. Now, every time I leave the house, I am risking my life to do so. You have to understand that this fate and more is what awaits those recovering these type of viruses, even when they consider them to be "mild cases". I am stressing the importance of these things in the hopes that it will save another from having their lives destroyed as mine was, as I would not wish this upon anyone.
Have you been listening to what survivors of COVID-19 have been telling us? What their physicians have been telling us? This isn't just about the death toll here, the numbers of those who survive with damage being done is so much higher than those dying here. Even when you remove the numbers of those between 70-80 entirely, we are still being left with massive amounts of people who are left with this severe long lasting damage to their bodies and their lives. Most of our current research is focusing on the short term impact here as we have been overwhelmed with just trying to manage the initial influx that we have yet to really focus on the long term impact of the damage being done here to organs. What we already know from SARS and MERS is that the lung damage with COVID-19 is similar to that of SARS and MERS and the data we have from the long term impact from both of those is not good. COVID-19 on the other hand actually does more than either of those however, as it has the additional impact of attacking the vascular system and other organs in addition to the lung damage and that makes for an even worse long term prognosis.
Imaging Manifestations of COVID-19 vs. MERS/SARS
Coronavirus disease (COVID-19) has now affected millions of people and caused over 250,000 deaths globally. Since the first outbreak in China in November 2...
The majority of the vulnerable were never exposed when the virus initially hit due to :
1)The virus had not spread to all regions of the US as it has now. There were less people infected overall so there was less risk overall and due to the shut down and students not returning to school after spring break last school year we were able to protect larger portions of the population from exposure.
2)The vulnerable populations were generally more cautious than the general population already as when you receive your diagnosis of a condition that leaves you compromised, you are educated on what life changes you have to now make to be able to survive. When you are diagnosed with conditions that leave you vulnerable, you are provided with the information that you need and have to make daily life changes from that point on. Your life is never the same after that. That is why most of the vulnerable populations were less likely to be exposed initially when the virus first hit, as they were already taking precautions as part of their daily routine DUE to their already existing conditions.
3) We still had access to PPE in the beginning. Like I stated before, the vulnerable populations already used N95 respirators, hand sanitizers, and disinfectants on a regular basis as a means of protection even in the best of times so they could be safer sitting in waiting rooms with suppressed immune systems. Chemo patients, for example, and others with suppressed immune systems could easily buy them on every corner as they were widespread and easily available. You often would see them standing in line at the pharmacy with them on or in waiting rooms at the clinic, as this was already a normal part of their life prior to the pandemic, especially during flu season. Due to the mass shortages, the vulnerable populations who were already dependent on this PPE prior to the pandemic in order to stay alive lost their access to these vital necessities entirely while simultaneously losing access to disinfectants at the same time so they have been rationing their supplies they had ahead of the pandemic for months now and those supplies have now been exhausted and unable to replenished. This means they will now be forcefully exposed when they were not exposed prior as they have had the supplies necessary to protect themselves stripped from them and they now have ran out of options and time.
With supplies exhausted and unable to replenish them this many months later, running out of time to treat their conditions that treatment was put on hold for due to the pandemic while simultaneously forcing increased exposure due to schools reopening instead of delaying until we are better prepared, the numbers of those in the vulnerable populations who are now forcefully exposed will start to greatly climb. The ONLY benefit we have to catching this now rather than at the beginning is that Physicians are more aware of what to look out for while attempting to treat COVID-19 patients and have a few more tools available than they previously had so hopefully this will improve patient outcomes. Though we are still greatly limited in our ability to treat the virus due to lack of access and shortages of what we need to do so. Sadly, still this many months is however, due to the incompetent government's response, we still have regions here that are having to to choose who gets to live and who is going to be sent home to die due to lack of resources to be able to treat them at all.
A Texas county's only hospital forced to choose "who is sent home to die" as ICU beds near capacity
"We are literally in a life or death situation," officials said.
www.cbsnews.com
It isn't just this one county in Texas however. Sadly most of the hospitals outside of the major cities in Texas are nowhere near equipped to handle any influx of patients, and due to the sheer size of Texas, that applies to the vast majority of the state. Prior to the Pandemic, most Texas hospitals were not even equipped to take burn patients and were having to send them 260+ miles away for treatment. I mentioned a while back that my friend out in west Texas had already told me that their hospital only had two ventilators, and that no surrounding hospitals would take transfers of ventilator patients, so that if they received any influx of patients for ICU there at all, they would have to just have to let them die due to not having the resources to treat them. This has not yet changed.
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Whether it was this thread or the one in the old forums, you posted stuff about the long haulers, the long-term effects, kids with the Kawasaki-like disease, young people dying at much higher rates due to undiagnosed conditions, there being 30 strains of the virus (which isn't true), the virus spreading aisles away in the supermarket (which is pretty meaningless). I wouldn't say you're necessarily saying it's deadlier than it is, but you post mainly worst-case scenarios that have extremely low probability of happening to any one person. You need to provide context for the actual risk of such things like how there was the sensationalist coverage shark attacks in the summer of 2001 when shark attacks were actually down. With regards to those that can have long-term effects, it's estimated that 15-20% of those that need to be treated in the ICU will have long term damage while only 2.3% of Covid patients are admitted to the ICU, which means at most only 0.5% (20% x 2.3) of people will have long term damage. That 0.5% is mostly likely well over estimated because I'm guessing that 2.3% of the Covid patients that do end up in the ICU are from a pool of people that actually went to the hospital (or they wouldn't be called patients) when most people get infected and don't need to go to the hospital at all so you can probably lower that by like 10x quite easily. Where's the US age data for younger people dying at higher rates than other countries if your fear of more people having undiagnosed conditions here in the US is causing higher death rates?
As to your claim that the death rate is going to increase because the vulnerable were isolating and now they'll become exposed, you can just use NYC data to get as accurate a death rate as possible. The vulnerable were most likely not isolating there when NYC got hit extremely hard before the shelter-at-home and isolations started. There's no reason that other parts of the country won't have a very similar death rate assuming the virus will eventually hit the vulnerable population as proportionally as it did in NYC. Also, as we're learning more about just how many have gotten infected, we're finding more and more people that had it that we didn't know, which drives down the death rate.
And, by the way, I'm not at all implying that just because a very small percentage of the population will die or have long-term effects that we should take the virus seriously and greatly slow the spread. It only takes a few simple guidelines to control the spread of the virus as other countries have shown, and just because there's a very low chance of the virus causing major harm on a per person basis doesn't mean everyone shouldn't follow the simple guidelines. Though, it is good to know the actual risk of things whether for peace of mind, stress levels, prioritizing the more dangerous things to take action on, etc.
But if it were, pollution is the winner thus far.
Air pollution
Air pollution kills an estimated seven million people worldwide every year. WHO data shows that 9 out of 10 people breathe air containing high levels of pollutants. WHO is working with countries to monitor air pollution and improve air quality.