20-50 year olds with no pre-existing conditions are at low risk. The policy of shutting down the economy indefinitely is frightening on its own and we'll be dealing with the steep repercussions of that for many years. This is not sustainable.
Hospitalization does not imply high risk. That article also has an unnecessarily wide range to make the data meaningless. Why are 20 year olds and 54 year olds bucketed in the same category?
For more accurate data, 0 deaths have occurred in Italy for those under 30. Under 40, the few (9) are due to severe pre-existing conditions. Median age for fatality is 80 years old.
The exponential curve not only applies for rate of infection but seems to be holding true for age as well.
Not sure why you are being downvoted rather than argued with.
Here is part of the problem: hospitalization and ICU don't necessarily mean the patient will die as long as we have the resources to hospitalize, intubate and medicate the patient.
Once we are out of respirators and the like, then the death rate with these patients will spike.
In Italy, we are seeing younger patients face graver conditions over time as the medical system gets overrun. [citation needed if someone help me dig one up? I can't remember where I read this]
this could be for a number of reasons though:
1. younger people feel invulnerable and go out more
2. underlying conditions in these people x a large population
These are all unsubstantiated claims that I am pushing back on against the mainstream narrative. Can you cite data for:
1. "Seeing younger patients facing graver conditions" - are we seeing excess mortality rates amongst the younger population in Italy as we speak (compared to say this time last year)?
could you please share a source? I dont think your comment deserves to be downvoted like it is, but a source on the data you mention would be very helpful.
I don't know why you're getting downvoted on this, the range they choose is super weird.
The actual report says that people under 19 comprise 2% of hospitalizations -- I doubt it suddenly jumps to 38% for the next 5 years. It also says there are no known fatalities of people under 19.
Japan shows that wide use of masks, good hygiene and a decent HC system should actually allow to keep the country running. After what's happened so far, I wonder whether Western countries will be able to learn from this - it's going to need lots of politicians to walk back on previous statements.
Some European countries weren't as deep into bad HC as the US so there are going to be a wide range of reactions and adaptation. Weird thing: in my country, the political entities responsible for budget cuts in HC are applauded at the moment for their handling of the situation they made worse because of those previous cuts.
Japan shows nothing besides doing a better job of the appearance games that US tried and failed to play. Everyone I know in Japan is saying the response is a disaster and bracing for the worst. There was a huge uptick in cases just reported and the media is starting to break their government-imposed silence and warn people.
Now that Olympic Games are cancelled they don’t have much reason to cook numbers anymore. I expect a gradual change in tune of official communication starting immediately.
Those aren't mutually exclusive. Japanese people can accuse their government of not responding effectively even though the Japanese government is doing a better job than the US.
From all the news I’ve seen (I watch Japanese news broadcasts most days), people there aren’t comparing the Japanese response to the US, but Taiwan, South Korea, and China. And the comparative failings are obvious and stark.
I watched the news this morning and the broadcasters were panicked at a level I haven’t seen since 3/11. No meaningful measure have been put in place to curb the spread of the disease or strengthen healthcare infrastructure in Japan.
But Aso Taro, a leading politician of the ruling LDP, did announce his major response initiative: giving out certificates for Wagyu beef.
They may be at low risk of death, but not of transmitting the disease. When the economy reopens, we need real measures to reduce transmission.
For example, all businesses with more than one person or with customer contact (including not-quite-employment situations like UPS or ride sharing) should take everyone’s temperature every day. Feverish or otherwise sick employees should be sent some, with pay, and there should be very strong disincentives for managers to encourage their employees to pretend to be healthy.
For another example, everyone on public transit or otherwise in a crowded place should wear a mask. If a real surgical mask is not available, a couple of layers of fabric should still help.
This comment applies to any viral disease that spreads amongst humans. What warrants a complete shutdown this time around when we didn't do the same for H1N1, SARS etc?
SARS was much more contained, and only infected ~8K people. It infected ~3K people outside of China, most whom were in east Asia. The case counts outside east Asia were in descending order:
- Canada: 250
- US: 27
- Germany: 9
Areas affected by SARS instituted targeted quarantines after detection and were able to contain the virus.
H1N1 was much less deadly than Covid-19 and spread less quickly. There were only ~18K confirmed deaths worldwide. (The estimated number of deaths was much higher at 150-600K. Basically, we confirmed it was less deadly than the seasonal flu so we didn't test everyone for it.)
People are freaking out about Covid-19 because it spreads faster and is already stressing hospitals. Deaths and cases double every 2-3 days absent control measures. It can take 2 weeks to cause symptoms, so even if everything gets shut down now, we could have 25x as many hospitalizations/deaths than today. If smaller control measures aren't as effective, it'd take time to confirm and the peak would be multiples higher. H1N1 spread much slower so we could have responded much more leisurely if things started to go out of control.
I’m not personally convinced that a complete shutdown is the right choice. But SARS wasn’t very contagious and only had a few total cases in the US. Arguably H1N1 should have had a somewhat stronger response. Also, people are used to the flu and it’s not as scary.
(Also, there wasn’t really any research needed to vaccinate against H1N1. It was just a matter of production. On the flip side, the flu mutates very quickly to evade immunity, whereas coronaviruses seem to mutate very very slowly. A COVID-19 vaccine that works* seems likely to provide protection essentially forever.)
* Early indications were that the obvious vaccine design for SARS made the disease worse, not better. That’s why we haven’t seen much excitement about inactivated COVID-19 vaccines.
Well, you can kick things off by sacrificing any member of your family over the age of 50 then.
It's almost as if people don't realise economies are reliant on people to contribute to them. You infect half the population you're going to have the same effect regardless. Only this way, we might not end up killing millions unnecessarily.
Its pretty simple. We didn't scale testing at all which turns a national isolation into just isolating people that are potentially infected. Then you keep isolating those people until it dies on the vine. This current solutions SUCKS, but it silver medal sucks to just letting the disease roam free and infect everyone.
Also, the whole "young people and what not are at low risk" is anecdotal. We have no clue what the longterm, and passive ramifications of this virus are.
So do we treat anyone outside the group of 20-50 year old with no preexisting conditions as acceptable collateral damage to keeping the economy afloat?
It is a balancing act, but we need to watch out that we're not letting the economy run the show based on things like overinflated valuations and speculation, which at the first sign of trouble, implode on themselves at almost a 50% loss.
How much actual value(quality of life) is really being generated here? How much of it is hype, bandwagons, and charades? How sustainable is it and what safety nets are available when the bottom falls out? During this time you also think about how many people are telecommuting effectively right now, and how much downtown economies and real estate relies on everyone getting in their car, or on a bus/train going downtown each morning, and then the knock on effects this has on the environment.
A lot of people don't want to hear pessimism or realism, they want to see growth, growth and growth. Growth at all other costs can still result in the side effect of quality of life improvements, but unlimited economic growth has not been sustainable, and we've had quite a few boom and bust cycles the last 2 decades now. If you're designing the economy to continually boom & bust, it's hard not to expect eventual economic destruction. It's not a matter of "not letting it happen", it's a matter of that's how it's been designed. It's what it does.
We quite literally do do what you're saying with general influenza that also takes folks outside the 20-50 range as collateral damage to keep the economy float. Hence your comment is meaningless without understanding how much more severe and infectious covid-19 is.
Collateral damage? There's no vaccine for this disease and we may not get one for years. We have to develop immunity for it at some point. We can't live in a bubble. A body in quarantine is safe but that is not what bodies are for.
The alternative is a wildly increased death rate, which you cannot reverse. There are so many ways to fix economies, only a few ways to address a pandemic.
If you do not have another solution that keeps people alive, kindly be quiet; you have nothing important to say.
There's only so many trillions of dollars the Fed can print before the whole structure of the economy buckles. And when economies buckle, death and despair ensue. The economy is about more than just making money. The Great Depression caused a lot of secondary effects including World War II. We definitely want to avoid situations like that.
EDIT: All complex decisions involve trade-offs. Right now, there's at least a few dozen more likely ways that people will die other than COVID-19. Heart disease, cancer, car accidents, even seasonal flu currently has a higher death count. You cannot lock down the economy for months on end, ratchet up unemployment to 30%+, and continue to feed people and keep their housing and shelter paid for. People's lives and livelihoods depend on the economy staying functional and healthy. It's not trivial. You have to find some way of moving forward without locking down all 320 million people. Maybe you look at areas of outbreak and you quarantine those areas on a piecewise basis. You ramp up testing, you use masks in public, you do something pro-active to keep the economy going. You provide assistance to those that are at high risk, but you let low risk individuals get back to work and keep the economy moving. The food you eat. The healthcare services you depend on. The military. The semi-truck drivers delivering products and services. The aircraft to transport products and people. All of that depends on the economy working.
Kindly keep the nasty comments about trying to dissuade me from discussing these important topics to yourself.
This argument is not worth responding to. You are arguing that our economy should be protected before people are protected. It is disgusting, and I'm tired of rehashing the same disgusting crap over and over.
If you really think that the economic effects outweigh the loss of life this virus can and will cause, all I can do is be glad that all you have is your ability to express your opinion, not the ability to do anything about it. Thank god for that.
Finally, and yes I'm quoting myself here "If you do not have another solution that keeps people alive, kindly be quiet; you have nothing important to say."
> Kindly keep the nasty comments about trying to dissuade me from discussing these important topics to yourself.
This is absurd; you're responding to me. And this isn't a discussion, these are opinions, with no facts to back them up. I simply find these opinions disgusting, as they do not prioritize keeping people healthy and alive.
We lose 30K+ people a year to car accidents, but we keep the roads and cars moving, because we accept that the collapse of those systems would cause more hardship and suffering and death than the systems themselves. We know lung cancer kills a lot of people, as well as liver disease, but we continue to allow for alcohol and cigarettes to be sold, because we know that the pain and suffering of enforcing the laws against those things is more expensive than the diseases themselves. We make all kinds of trade-offs in society. I'm arguing for: protecting the vulnerable and supporting them financially through the crisis but enabling the large bulk of our 20-50 year old workforce to keep the lights on by going back to work and engaging in commerce. That can involve all sorts of compromises with regards to hygiene, but it has to happen. We have tons of debt as a country, there are real systemic risks to continuing like this indefinitely.
You also have to take into account what might happen if millions of people loose their shit. People that have nothing to loose are dangerous. Never underestimate stupid people in large groups.
Forgetting the overload of medical infrastructure for a bit, here are some of the myriad of issues that this leads to:
1. There are 20-50 year olds with pre-existing conditions such as asthma who are at higher risk. For example, a colleague on my team has asthma. Another colleague on my team has a husband who has asthma. As a Manager, I can't ask either of them to come into work.
2. What about 20-50 year olds who come in contact with 50+ year old or live together with them? They may be at low risk, but they will definitely spread the virus around more
It becomes quite complicated dealing with these things on a case by case basis.
