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Is our fight against coronavirus worse than the disease?

nytimes.com

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Re: Is our fight against coronavirus worse than the disease?

#21

Post by taylodl »

sparrish wrote: post #18
ardit33 wrote: post #10

Eh.... no... that's what Italy tried to do, (tried to stamp out clusters, while keeping everything the same and itdidn't work) Right now they are having massive casualties per day, to almost (if not more) than ww2, and there is no sign of slowing down yet. "Italy reports 5,986 new cases of coronavirus and 627 new deaths, raising total to 47,021 cases and 4,032 dead"

No, Italy's real issue is they're have the oldest population in Europe and the highest per/capita smokers in Europe. Since Covid-19 hits that demographic hardest (elderly with respiratory issues), they have the highest mortality rate. The average age of those dying from this in Italy is 80.

Don't forget the under 55 group are still consuming precious ICU resources. No, they don't typically die, but yes they're tying up needed resources and as such are contributing to the overall number of deaths.

Re: Is our fight against coronavirus worse than the disease?

#22

Post by vinni2 »

scout4 wrote: post #15

The clustering of complications and death from Covid-19 among the elderly and chronically ill, but not children (there have been only very rare deaths in children), suggests that we could achieve the crucial goals of social distancing — saving lives and not overwhelming our medical system — by preferentially protecting the medically frail and those over age 60, and in particular those over 70 and 80, from exposure. F…

> That way the virus spreads quickly among the less at risk, they suffer no or minor symptoms, and develop herd immunity.

It sounds wonderful if it works but unfortunately hard to enforce. And not to mention virus could mutate causing second outbreak.

Re: Is our fight against coronavirus worse than the disease?

#23

Post by nisten »

Hmmm, I dont like the article however there is some logic here.

If you are a low risk adult, and if you have the option to infect yourself at home, you would only have to isolate for 2-3 weeks until you have developed immunity and are good to go back to work and help others etc...

By not letting young people get infected we're isolating them for way way longer than they should be and this is extremely inefficient.

However, leaving ethics aside entirely, for that solution to work we would need self-infection kits for low risk people to use at home which is quite messed up.

Re: Is our fight against coronavirus worse than the disease?

#24

Post by zigzaggy »

dsjoerg wrote: post #6

Subhead is better than headline: "There may be more targeted ways to beat the pandemic." Thought-provoking piece. And if we had much more available testing, what it proposes could be a smart way to go. Until we have much more available testing, it's a pipe dream.

Exactly. With mass testing options, we would be one solid plan away from getting back to some semblance of normal life. A combo of taking temp and testing those with fever, and the quarantining the sick, we could be confident in being in public again. I know this is critical but how long will we need to isolate if we don’t get medical intervention? Can our economy survive this kind of shut down for more than a few weeks?

Edit to say I’m all for flattening the curve, and I’m not a denier. But there are trade offs going on here. We aren’t rich enough to ride this out for several months without permanent systemic damage. I think tough questions are warranted

Re: Is our fight against coronavirus worse than the disease?

#25

Post by slowmovintarget »

scout4 wrote: post #15

The clustering of complications and death from Covid-19 among the elderly and chronically ill, but not children (there have been only very rare deaths in children), suggests that we could achieve the crucial goals of social distancing — saving lives and not overwhelming our medical system — by preferentially protecting the medically frail and those over age 60, and in particular those over 70 and 80, from exposure. F…

Except that children can spread it faster among caretakers that have contact with the elderly. Many of those caretakers, like people my age, either have young children (like me), or are in contact with people who have young children.

It also turns out that certain classes of drugs can drop the otherwise statistically less at risk squarely into the grave risk category without their knowing it. (High BP meds, NSAIDS, others we perhaps don't yet know about). Going for the "maybe it isn't that big of a deal" approach seems like a bad idea to me.

Re: Is our fight against coronavirus worse than the disease?

#26

Post by rzk »

The article asks some legitimate questions that beg for answers:

If we succeed in slowing the spread of coronavirus from torrent to trickle, then when does the society-wide disruption end? When will it be safe for healthy children and younger teachers to return to school, much less older teachers and teachers with chronic illnesses? When will it be safe for the work force to repopulate the workplace, given that some are in the at-risk group for severe infection?

When would it be safe to visit loved ones in nursing homes or hospitals? When once again might grandparents pick up their grandchildren?

There are many possible answers, but the most likely one is: We just don’t know. We could wait until there’s an effective treatment, a vaccine or transmission rates fall to undetectable levels. But what if those are a year or more away? Then we suffer the full extent of societal disruption the virus might cause for all those months. The costs, not just in money, are staggering to contemplate.

Re: Is our fight against coronavirus worse than the disease?

#27

Post by DanBC »

zigzaggy wrote: post #24
dsjoerg wrote: post #6

Subhead is better than headline: "There may be more targeted ways to beat the pandemic." Thought-provoking piece. And if we had much more available testing, what it proposes could be a smart way to go. Until we have much more available testing, it's a pipe dream.

Exactly. With mass testing options, we would be one solid plan away from getting back to some semblance of normal life. A combo of taking temp and testing those with fever, and the quarantining the sick, we could be confident in being in public again. I know this is critical but how long will we need to isolate if we don’t get medical intervention? Can our economy survive this kind of shut down for more than a few we…

> A combo of taking temp and testing those with fever,

You can have, and spread, covid-19 for several days before you develop a temperature.

Re: Is our fight against coronavirus worse than the disease?

#29

Post by hcurtiss »

slowmovintarget wrote: post #25
scout4 wrote: post #15

The clustering of complications and death from Covid-19 among the elderly and chronically ill, but not children (there have been only very rare deaths in children), suggests that we could achieve the crucial goals of social distancing — saving lives and not overwhelming our medical system — by preferentially protecting the medically frail and those over age 60, and in particular those over 70 and 80, from exposure. F…

Except that children can spread it faster among caretakers that have contact with the elderly. Many of those caretakers, like people my age, either have young children (like me), or are in contact with people who have young children. It also turns out that certain classes of drugs can drop the otherwise statistically less at risk squarely into the grave risk category without their knowing it. (High BP meds, NSAIDS, o…

That has to be weighed against the impacts of cratering the economy, which we know to be a big deal.

Re: Is our fight against coronavirus worse than the disease?

#30

Post by zigzaggy »

DanBC wrote: post #27
zigzaggy wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly. With mass testing options, we would be one solid plan away from getting back to some semblance of normal life. A combo of taking temp and testing those with fever, and the quarantining the sick, we could be confident in being in public again. I know this is critical but how long will we need to isolate if we don’t get medical intervention? Can our economy survive this kind of shut down for more than a few we…

> A combo of taking temp and testing those with fever, You can have, and spread, covid-19 for several days before you develop a temperature.

Well I’m hearing most people are going to get it anyway. With tests we can slow it down. We’re going to have to accept some risk though aren’t we? We can’t really afford to shut the whole economy down for several months. And if you look at Italy it doesn’t appear to working that well anyway.

At least with testing we can catch a large chunk of the asymptomatic spreaders and get control of this thing. But in a few weeks when this fist wave passes, we’re gonna all have to learn to mitigate risk with good hygiene and accept we may get it. Testing is our only hope to returning to normal life before we totally crush our economy.

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