251–260 of 349 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Keep extrapolating and you'll find 2.5 trillion people will be dead just a week after that.
Look at Italy; look at Spain. These are not unreasonable extrapolations.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
It IS a live virus in many cases: "A vaccine typically contains an agent that resembles a disease-causing microorganism and is often made from weakened or killed forms of the microbe, its toxins, or one of its surface proteins." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vaccine I have nothing against vaccines, but my understanding is that you CAN get sick from it.
The definition of "sick" matters here. A dead-virus vaccine like the flu shot cannot give you the flu. It can cause "sick" side-effects (for example: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guillain%E2%80%93Barr%C3%A9_sy... , or the fairly common aches and pains from the immune response), but not the flu . A live-virus vaccine like the flu nasal spray can give you the flu, especially if you're immune suppressed or something al…
Are you saying that a lot of vaccines are NOT weakened versions of the actual virus which can give you the sickness if your immune system is weak?
Or are you saying that the commonly used flu vaccine in the US does not utilize a live form of the virus?
If you are talking about the specifics of the latter, you could be right, I am not an expert.
Judging by the history of most pandemics, I am currently more worried about the capacity of morgues than hospitals. Maybe this one will be different though.
All the emergency managers did a great job posting videos and FAQs, which are completely useless now. We should have been building massive free clinics in every city starting two weeks ago. This is a failure of imagination.
As a layperson in academia, I certainly recognized the potential threat just from the news trickling out of China in late 2019. Meanwhile, I had colleagues who went ahead with business travel to Italy towards the end of February! There is mind-boggling inertia in the capacity for the public at large to internalize disruptive facts and ideas, and this inertia connects back through the body politic into representative leadership, who can be pinned down like Gulliver even if they are aware that action is required.
A relative of mine works in security and risk mitigation for a large school district in CA. They were being briefed on the COVID-19 risk by their federal contacts in late January. They were scrambling to revise and organize appropriate disaster plans. Even with that, they struggled to steer the whole ship around to school closures in mid-March.
Now, imagine that every large organization had to do similarly in the same timeframe, drawing mostly on extant resources. They could not all hire new staff, bring in specialists, or procure large supplies that were not already part of their general war-chest for unknown emergencies.
It was easy to see the future: you just look up on the wiki the evolution of numbers of confirmed cases in the EU countries.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Look at Italy; look at Spain. These are not unreasonable extrapolations.
Neither of them have exponential growth. The rate of growth has steadily decreased after the first initial spike of cases.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
People are probably referring to the immune response. The flu shot does trigger an immune response and other side effects, so having a fever, muscle aches, etc. is not made up. I too have a far more severe reaction every time I get a flu shot than I've ever had from actual flu.
>> I too have a far more severe reaction every time I get a flu shot than I've ever had from actual flu. Then why bother?
Also the immune response can suck, but I would think the risk for complications is still actually lower than genuine infection. I would see the flu shot as taking one for the team.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
The fact that we're more likely to listen to a politician (or a media figure) rather than someone who has spent the better portion of four decades studying a topic is one of the most existential threats we face. We need to figure out a way to get through the tribal mentality. Right now, a significant plurality (if not an actual majority) of people are more concerned about their side winning points than about effectiv…
Seriously, what is the analogous computer science problem to this? Why is it that a lifetime of experiences, and I still draw blanks every time I try to figure out what to do about this stuff. I mean... everything minus scenarios which include massive amounts of death. Surely there's a better way though.
This is driven, as far as I understand it, by evolutionary psychology. It was an advantage to be "right enough, and unified" as opposed to "completely right, but divided", and an advantage to take care of "us" before taking care of "them." As a result, we are hard-wired toward tribalism.
Smart people are able to set this aside and deal with the facts as they are, but we still have to overcome the initial, emotional surge that takes offense whenever something we hold true is challenged.
One of the big issues is that people don't see immediate fallout from this sort of behavior on the national level. They vote for people who cut taxes for the rich and gut worker protections, but never connect that to their own financial ruin. The effect follows too far after, and too far from, the cause.
Politics, as a result, is treated like football: root for your team, because the other team sucks.
We might see some of that change as the bodies start piling up from COVID-19, but I doubt that there will be a larger societal change.
The 2017-2018 flu season also overwhelmed US hospitals: https://time.com/5107984/hospitals-handling-burden-flu-patie... https://www.cdc.gov/flu/about/season/flu-season-2017-2018.ht... My point isn't that we should take Coronavirus any less seriously this year. Healthcare workers have no vaccine for it. It's on top of the flu. Etc. My point is that we should take the flu more seriously every year. Everyone gets their…
> Loyola University Health System in Chicago—which set a hospital flu-activity record of 190 confirmed cases between January 7 and 13 It's not even close to what we saw just this week from coronavirus. Stop making a comparison where there isn't one to be made, this is much worse than the flu.
The CDC estimates that up to 710,000 Americans have been hospitalised by the flu in the past six months out of 54 million infected.
Up to 59,000 of them died. IN SIX MONTHS. In the USA alone.
https://www.cdc.gov/flu/about/burden/preliminary-in-season-e...
Stop trivialising influenza.