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You misunderstand Raffia. It's the same as a comparison with car -accident deaths. Like Influnza, it is something that is really not uncommon and if we get influenza (or a car accident) we can hope to survive it. Yet they are massively higher in number than the shocking plane crashes that grounded airline fleets.
Quite so my dear old bog-snorkeler. We have approximately 37,000 people dying every day in car crashes and we don't bat an eyelid but if we have one plane crash in a year that kills 150 people, then it's world news and fleets of that particular aircraft are grounded.
A bit like starvation really. Unlike Covid-19, we never see daily news coverage of the thousands of people who die of starvation every day. As I think I've said before, THAT would be because Covid-19 affects the rich whilst starvation doesn't.
Whilst not trying to detract from the problem of Covid-19 and what it may yet have in store for the world, I reiterate what I said before. If there had been no such thing as Covid-19 and we had had the present number of deaths from Influenza rather than C-19, we wouldn't have heard a squeak about it.
Quite so my dear old bog-snorkeler. We have approximately 37,000 people dying every day in car crashes and we don't bat an eyelid but if we have one plane crash in a year that kills 150 people, then it's world news and fleets of that particular aircraft are grounded.
You comparisons, or whatever you call them, Rafius, are entirely out of context.
It's not about the number of people that are dying due to CV-19 (though it is an issue in its own right), it is about the number of CV-19 patients that require hospitalization and critical care at the same time and at the same hospitals; it is about medical professionals who are understaffed, undertrained, short on medical equipment and PPE, staff that are themselves dangerously exposed and dying having contracted CV-19 from the patients they are supposed to be saving. It is about the system that, because of the strained resources, is having to decide whom to admit to the hospital and whom to leave to their fate. It is about a finite surge capacity of medical facilities amidst exponential growth of required hospitalizations.
Last edited by Itzpapalotl; 03-29-2020 at 10:49 AM..
I'm in NJ, in the commuting range of NYC. People here are taking it seriously. It's the less-populous places where it hasn't yet quickly spread that have the illusion that the problem is confined to the densely-populated areas, and where people are still congregating and not practicing social distancing and sheltering in place.
But I didn't compare it to influenza. Don't read in what isn't there. I said that the number of people that have died from this virus globally so far, is still nowhere near the annual global death rate from influenza...which is a true statement. Nowhere did I say that it was the same or similar to flu or that the death rate would not exceed the annual flu numbers.
My point was, that at the moment there have been (Globally) 621,000 confirmed cases of Covid-19, resulting in 28,600 deaths.
Now compare that to the annual average global cases of influenza, which is 5,000,000 cases resulting in 646,000 deaths.
All I'm saying is that, we need to get things into prospective. I'm not saying that we shouldn't be worried about it or that it's not a serious problem or that by the end of the year everything will be fine...but if we were looking at influenza figures of 621,000 cases and 28,600 deaths rather than the normal 5 million cases and 646,000 deaths.... we'd be throwing street parties!
It may be that figures will exceed that of influenza, we don't know but at the moment it should be a case of 'Keep your head down and Keep Calm'...and I'm saying this as someone who is in the very highest risk category.
Nope.
Death rate is the number of people dying in relation to a proportion of the population. Usually per thousand people or expressed as a percentage of the people who are tested / diagnosed.
Influenza kills at a rate of approximately 0.1%
The death rate of COVID 19 is still unclear since the number of people being tested in each country varies wildly.
In New York for example, testing has really taken off so the number of people dying that test positive is around 1.5%
In Italy the death rate is 10%.
Even if the figures, at a minimum, were at a death rate of only 1% (which they're clearly not) that is still ten times more people dying from COVID 19 than die from influenza. This is the perspective you need to be taking.
Without protective measures, without finding treatments and an eventual vaccine, you can take take whatever number of fatalities you have for flu and multiply that by a factor of at least 10, likely many times more.
You comparisons, or whatever you call them, Rafius, are entirely out of context.
It's not about the number of people that are dying due to CV-19 (though it is an issue in its own right), it is about the number of CV-19 patients that require hospitalization and critical care at the same time and at the same hospitals; it is about medical professionals who are understaffed, undertrained, short on medical equipment and PPE, staff that are themselves dangerously exposed and dying having contracted CV-19 from the patients they are supposed to be saving. It is about the system that, because of the strained resources, is having to decide whom to admit to the hospital and whom to leave to their fate. It is about a finite surge capacity of medical facilities amidst exponential growth of required hospitalizations.
That's a good point. Influenza, road deaths other stuff happens over a year and is a relatively low per capita effect and sort of collateral damage for living.
The situation here is more of a threatened danger that one that had actually happened. Grounding aircraft and working societies (pretty much) is in hopes to prevent problems while the cure is found. In both cases the prevention was done in a month or two. What the virus will look like at the end of the year is yet to be seen. Hopefully it might die out in a month or so more, or it might be a shocker like the post 'great war' influenza epidemic. But these sudden high risk events are always more noteworthy than the constant worry about road deaths and the like, which are more chronic.
I'm in NJ, in the commuting range of NYC. People here are taking it seriously. It's the less-populous places where it hasn't yet quickly spread that have the illusion that the problem is confined to the densely-populated areas, and where people are still congregating and not practicing social distancing and sheltering in place.
I'm glad you posted and wondered if you were okay, and if you were re-experiencing any trauma, considering what you endured nearly 20 years ago on 9/11. Even if you have dealt with it intellectually, which you appear to have done, the body gets imprinted with war-time trauma, and here's another one no-one really expected.
You comparisons, or whatever you call them, Rafius, are entirely out of context.
It's not about the number of people that are dying due to CV-19 (though it is an issue in its own right), it is about the number of CV-19 patients that require hospitalization and critical care at the same time and at the same hospitals; it is about medical professionals who are understaffed, undertrained, short on medical equipment and PPE, staff that are themselves dangerously exposed and dying having contracted CV-19 from the patients they are supposed to be saving. It is about the system that, because of the strained resources, is having to decide whom to admit to the hospital and whom to leave to their fate. It is about a finite surge capacity of medical facilities amidst exponential growth of required hospitalizations.
Thought the same sort of thing as I scratched my head reading Rafius' comment...
What you explain and the simple fact that what tends to make the news is what appears exceptional one way or another. That anyone can't understand that simple fact and/or what is exceptional, like this pandemic, is hard to fathom...
I'm in NJ, in the commuting range of NYC. People here are taking it seriously. It's the less-populous places where it hasn't yet quickly spread that have the illusion that the problem is confined to the densely-populated areas, and where people are still congregating and not practicing social distancing and sheltering in place.
I'm just south of the SF Bay area. My daughter and son-in-law live in the City. Son and his GF live just across the Bay.
Taking it seriously here too of course. Haven't seen our kids for awhile and no telling when we'll be able to again. Hard to do while seeing evidence of nitwits a little slow on the up take all the while...
I'm glad you posted and wondered if you were okay, and if you were re-experiencing any trauma, considering what you endured nearly 20 years ago on 9/11. Even if you have dealt with it intellectually, which you appear to have done, the body gets imprinted with war-time trauma, and here's another one no-one really expected.
Of course, that's not quite accurate. Lots of scientists and medical professionals did expect this. Even authors in various fields. I should have said that most average people didn't expect it. Particularly an event that occurred so very quickly, or demands such a quick response.
My helper's going for groceries this week. I'm providing her with gloves and hand sanitizer, and spraying everything with Clorox when she leaves the groceries. I can live on rice and water but got to have kitty food. I'm glad I moved off of that old property I inherited and sold the horses. I'm afraid for what will happen to them if the economy continues to crater. It makes me cry if I think of them.
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