Off_Field wrote:
I’m becoming more convinced at the moment it’s best to just look after yourself and close /vulnerable people as much as possible and avoid contributing to the rapid spread
In the real world that is what most people do, mainly motivated by fear – which when carried to an extreme is a bad thing, but in moderation a good thing. Also in the real world the young and fearless infect themselves quicker (with substantially lower consequence) and likely gain immunity, eventually in doing so protecting the remaining old and vulnerable who are wise to stay out of harms way in the meantime. Meanwhile the continued activity of the young and fearless prevents the economy and society from collapse, even while a small percentage dies due to their lack of fear.
Silvaire wrote:
I don’t have a “right” to be protected from nature by government, nor do I want one. I do have the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.
And in the mean time, during the last 24 hours, Corona killed 475 souls in Italy alone. It’s a similar situation that must be prevented elsewhere.
https://www.imperial.ac.uk/news/196234/covid19-imperial-researchers-model-likely-impact/
Is the implication we will adopt the new measures until an effective vaccine is available?
My understanding is that the fatality rate is about .8% of all those infected. Most, not all of those, had preexisting medical problems most of which were with people older than 70. As more testing becomes available we will get better data. If the fatality rate stays anywhere near that .8% I would say the world over reacted in a very severe way. Im hoping that .8% rate will be valid in 2 months time. In any case its good that the govts we entrusted with our heath care will have at least learned to be better prepared for a future eventuality.
I think the luck with Ebola and SARS has been that they aren’t quite as infectious so it was possible to stamp them out. The combination of people infecting many others, people being infectious before they are symptomatic, and people remaining infectious for a long time, means that it was always going to be hard to contain this one.
Despite disagreeing about the degree of threat from the virus, I agree with Silvaire: we should remain vigilant that our civil rights aren’t unduly eroded during this period and that they are restored to us as soon as possible as the threat lifts.
RobertL18C wrote:
Is the implication we will adopt the new measures until an effective vaccine is available
Nobody knows.
Two scenarios might turn this around much earlier:
– a lot more people are infected with mild or no symptoms that we realise, so we will hit the point where growth is slowed by more and more people having immunity much sooner than could be expected from the confirmed cases
– we develop quick and reliable testing that allows testing nearly everyone frequently and before they are infectious to any significant degree, and we then can isolate only those who are actually infected, not everyone.
Personally, my hope is on testing, although the current technology and capacity is significantly less than 1% of what is required for that.
If the fatality rate is 0.8 percent and nearly everyone gets it, sixty million will die, and there will be almost twice as many funerals than in a normal year.
kwlf wrote:
we should remain vigilant that our civil rights aren’t unduly eroded during this period and that they are restored to us as soon as possible as the threat lifts
Tell that to the people who get killed by this. There number who will die from this, seems to be inverse proportional to the amount of personal freedom that is exercised. Italy vs Korea for instance (even though Italy was more of a “didn’t know the danger” kind of thing perhaps, or didn’t care). I think all western countries have the legal matters in place when it come to fighting a disease. Temporary measures that will hit individual freedom hard, have been in place for ages.
Those measures are unproblematic, the problem now is that they are not enough. The real problem is lack of capacity of health care. This must be solved somehow, and decisions have to be taken super fast with only sketchy knowledge of the situations. It is a war-like situation, and all kinds of odd problems pops up. For instance: In Norway we like to go to our cottages, either by the sea, or in the mountains. A natural thing to do during this Corona outbreak is to go in isolation, and what better place than to go to the cottage? It is in isolation, relatively far from other people, a perfect place to hold out for weeks, months, years if needed. But, these cottages are typically placed in counties with few native inhabitants, and proportionally small health care system, which is in no way dimensioned to handle all the cottage people in an emergency like this. What the government has said (at least this is the status last night), is that either people turn back to their homes voluntarily, or laws will be made to make it illegal to go to cottages outside your home county. I will expect the law to be passed today, because people are crazy about their “right” to stay at their cottages.
The VFR restrictions in Norway is a similar thing, although for a different reason.
Of course things have to get back to normal when this situation has passed. But I mean, no one believes it won’t. Not here at least.
Peter wrote:
EuroGA is NOT going to be a host site for anti vaxxers
Hear! Hear!
Cobalt wrote:
If the fatality rate is 0.8 percent and nearly everyone gets it, sixty million will die, and there will be almost twice as many funerals than in a normal year.
Assuming that deaths from Covid-19 are independent of deaths from other causes which clearly they are not.
