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Social distancing slowing not only Covid-19, but other diseases too

qz.com

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Re: Social distancing slowing not only Covid-19, but other diseases too

#21

Post by scrollaway »

ShorsHammer wrote: post #13

The lockdown of non-essential businesses has essentially reduced traffic accidents here to zero when usually there'd be a over a hundred deaths and few thousand injuries per week. By comparison there's only been 20 deaths from covid-19 over the space of 3 months, nearly all of them elderly people with pre-existing conditions. Yet people are emotional creatures and not all deaths are equal.

The "car accidents" fallacy.

1. "New thing X puts us at risk of losing Y lives every day."

2. "We lose Y lives to car accidents every day".

3. "Ergo, X is harmless!"

Except you now have 2Y lives lost every day.

Furthermore, car accidents kill an insane amount of people, and cars suck. This is not the bar.

Re: Social distancing slowing not only Covid-19, but other diseases too

#22

Post by dathinab »

nxc18 wrote: post #11
bluedevil2k wrote: post #6

I was thinking if we go all in on this stay-in-place and we get it working around the world, could we eliminate measles? Chicken pox? Any other human-virus disease that relies on human-to-human contact to spread?

Unfortunately, I think a more significant cause of the continued existence of these diseases is failure to vaccinate, either by choice (anti-vax) or due to circumstance (cost of vaccination, access to health care, etc). There are several diseases that society could eradicate that we simply choose not to. Even wealthy tech people are affected by this; I was just told my very good insurance doesn't cover a vaccine that…

Not sure why you got down voted, I can only agree.

Social distancing only slows distribution it doesn't prevent it reliably also some disease are spread by animals which are not at all affected by social distancing.

And then vaccines are also not enough as it had shown for some disease where we did try to eliminate them by handing out free vaccines in affected countries.

Lastly social distancing has a super high cost if continued. Not only economically but a super high health cost. Humans are not meant to live permanently social distanced they are inherently social animals and the internet can't really replace it. E.g. for people fighting depression social distancing can be like poison. It prevents them or at least restrict them from doing many the thinks which can help fighting depression and causes "physical" isolation (Internet is helping but has limits, it's not helping enough to counter it). Another group most likely majorly negatively affected are people with "home" problems, like violent partners or parents (or just to controlling partners or parents). To just name some example.

Re: Social distancing slowing not only Covid-19, but other diseases too

#23

Post by fiblye »

MobileVet wrote: post #17

Just imagine how many fewer people would fall ill each year with the flu if we didn’t shake hands as our default greeting?

I really hope this helps kill the concept of handshaking entirely.

Unfortunately, there's still a large segment of dirty-handed people who think you can judge a person based on their handshake.

Re: Social distancing slowing not only Covid-19, but other diseases too

#24

Post by daveguy »

MobileVet wrote: post #17

Just imagine how many fewer people would fall ill each year with the flu if we didn’t shake hands as our default greeting?

This will be a very good silver lining. Bows, elbow bumps. Not sure what the standard greeting will be, but getting away from handshakes and cheek kissing will make all of us healthier.

Re: Social distancing slowing not only Covid-19, but other diseases too

#26

Post by SomeGuy789 »

fiblye wrote: post #23
MobileVet wrote: post #17

Just imagine how many fewer people would fall ill each year with the flu if we didn’t shake hands as our default greeting?

I really hope this helps kill the concept of handshaking entirely. Unfortunately, there's still a large segment of dirty-handed people who think you can judge a person based on their handshake.

There's a lot of hidden value in physical contact. I don't think it should be disregarded so easily considering society as a whole became much more distant in recent years.

Re: Social distancing slowing not only Covid-19, but other diseases too

#27

Post by dathinab »

sudoaza wrote: post #4

I was hoping for this, lets do social distancing a tradition for every winter

Please do not. Social distancing has a high health cost, mainly wrt. mental health. It bad for depressed people, people with "home" problems like violent partners or parent, people which have problems socializing, children (in general, or at lest for most children it's bad if kept up).

It's fine if done once due to a bigger health emergency but it only should be a last effort if we have no better way to handle it.

Instead I would prefer:

1. Better wide spread education about all kind of disease and related thinks, especially de-stickmatization. But this would need major changes like proper sexed (required for proper education about STD's).

2. Wide spread vaccination where applicable. (maybe even required, e.g. for children when entering school).

3. Good health system so that people can always get help to fight illnesses, at least infectious ones.

Re: Social distancing slowing not only Covid-19, but other diseases too

#28

Post by ineedasername »

There could be some selection bias here. It's based on thermometer readings from Kinsa. And the articles states:

Kinsa is receiving two to three times more thermometer readings per day than in previous flu seasons

Many more people may be taking thermometer reading that don't really need to, but are being cautious. That would cause the appearance of a proportional drop in high temp readings compared to prior years when really it's just that lots of not-so-sick people are taking their temp lots more.

Re: Social distancing slowing not only Covid-19, but other diseases too

#29

Post by lotsofpulp »

Analemma_ wrote: post #15
ShorsHammer wrote: post #13

The lockdown of non-essential businesses has essentially reduced traffic accidents here to zero when usually there'd be a over a hundred deaths and few thousand injuries per week. By comparison there's only been 20 deaths from covid-19 over the space of 3 months, nearly all of them elderly people with pre-existing conditions. Yet people are emotional creatures and not all deaths are equal.

As of right now, covid-19 is killing about 2,200 people/day, compared to about 3,300 people/day for car accidents. So it hasn't caught up yet, but it's still on an exponential climb and will probably get there in another week or so, and then keep right on climbing. This whole "the flu/cars/heart disease is way worse" shtick people are leaning on has got to stop. It's true until exponential growth suddenly means it's…

Wouldn’t the number of people the virus will kill will reach a maximum and then decline rapidly as the remaining population will be immune to it?
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