5 ms·

Was waiting for this. The flu kills 10000 people a year in the US and pneumonia kills 45000. Suicide kills 47000 a year which makes you wonder why we aren't sp

by inglor 7y ago

Was waiting for this. The flu kills 10000 people a year in the US and pneumonia kills 45000. Suicide kills 47000 a year which makes you wonder why we aren't spending more effort on mental health given it's a bigger cause of death. CDC ref: https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/deaths.htm https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/deaths.htm

temporama1 7y ago
If this virus infects 60% of the world's population, and has a death rate of 1%, that's 50 million deaths.
downerending 7y ago
They're worth effort, but the answer is that the parameters area reasonably well known. Suicide isn't increasing exponentially, for example.
- lawlorino 7y ago
  Exactly this. The expected annual deaths from suicide are normally distributed whereas a highly contagious disease is long-tailed, i.e. a non-negligible probability of a huge number of fatalities.
throwaway55554 7y ago
Terrorism kills 2 people per year in the U.S. and we spend 100s of billions. The difference is large companies make more money building weapons than large companies make treating the flue (or mental health). Edit: The point is, it's all about money. There's no rational reason to spend so much on terrorism and so little on mental health, yet we do.
- downerending 7y ago
  Not going to claim that that money is all well-spent, but terrorism (and security in general) is a rather different problem. A single failure can cost thousands of lives, and huge knock-on effects, as we've sadly seen.
- lawlorino 7y ago
  I disagree, as I posted elsewhere in this thread these annual death rates are drawn from different distributions. The annual suicide rate is normally distributed, in other words the expected number of deaths will be around the same number each year. Terrorism and pandemics are long-tailed meaning a non-negligible probability that the rate shoots up to something much higher than your quoted two per year.
jbay808 7y ago
Suicide is a big problem, buy it's scary in a different way. I'm not personally worried about a suicide epidemic, or catching suicide from someone.
- CydeWeys 7y ago
  And yet there are actually suicide clusters, with people essentially "catching it" from their friends or loved ones who've committed suicide.
  - keanzu 7y ago
    A copycat suicide is defined as an emulation of another suicide that the person attempting suicide knows about either from local knowledge or due to accounts or depictions of the original suicide on television and in other media. A spike of emulation suicides after a widely publicized suicide is known as the Werther effect. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copycat_suicide https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copycat_suicide Unbelievably you are correct. You can "catch it". Amazing.
  - baddox 7y ago
    This seems like equivocation on the meaning of "catching it." Isolating yourself so that you either have no close relationships or somehow never hear about any suicides among your close relationships is a fairly nonsensical proposal, and probably wouldn't in fact decrease your chances of committing suicide.
    - catalogia 7y ago
      The realization that suicide has contagious properties does have practical ethical ramifications for journalism. It's not some impractical theoretical matter that can't be acted on.
      - totalZero 7y ago
        I went to a talk on this very matter. Kurt Cobain's suicide is an interesting case study on how journalism affects the development (or attenuation) of suicide clusters. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/8897665 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/8897665
ericb 7y ago
Why not? Because math. This is a contagion. Read about the Spanish Flu. This looks to be both more contagious, and more deadly in most of the published studies. We hope they are biased and overly pessimistic, but whataboutism isn't helpful here. Your argument is like if the rug in your living room is on fire, and you say "why worry about that rug--we should really invest in fixing that roof leak." I agree roof leaks are also bad.
- Godel_unicode 7y ago
  Here are the CDC burden (upper bound) estimates for the 2019-2020 flu season: 30 million infections, 30k deaths. In other words, 0.1% of infections are predicted to be fatal, which is substantially lower than the current estimates for 2019-nCoV. https://www.cdc.gov/flu/about/burden/preliminary-in-season-estimates.htm https://www.cdc.gov/flu/about/burden/preliminary-in-season-e...
endorphone 7y ago
These sorts of comparisons are, I would respectfully argue, not very helpful because the various causes of mortality are additive, not competing to kill the same victims (generally). We don't need a perpetual cycle of coronavirus in addition to the perpetual cycle of the flu that we already have, in addition to suicide and every other cause of death. The world's health organizations are trying desperately to curtail it before it becomes a norm. Which is why saying "Oh, why cancel this it's no biggie" is just so misled. If the world was in a situation where we could seriously contain and eliminate the flu, we would surely take every possible measure to do so.
anonuser123456 7y ago
The flu infects 30,000,000/year and kills 10,000. Given r0, the Covid-2019 would infect 60,000,000 and kill 1,000,000 if unchecked in the US.

by inglor 7y ago

temporama1 7y ago

If this virus infects 60% of the world's population, and has a death rate of 1%, that's 50 million deaths.

downerending 7y ago

They're worth effort, but the answer is that the parameters area reasonably well known. Suicide isn't increasing exponentially, for example.

lawlorino 7y ago
Exactly this. The expected annual deaths from suicide are normally distributed whereas a highly contagious disease is long-tailed, i.e. a non-negligible probability of a huge number of fatalities.

throwaway55554 7y ago

Terrorism kills 2 people per year in the U.S. and we spend 100s of billions. The difference is large companies make more money building weapons than large companies make treating the flue (or mental health). Edit: The point is, it's all about money. There's no rational reason to spend so much on terrorism and so little on mental health, yet we do.

downerending 7y ago
Not going to claim that that money is all well-spent, but terrorism (and security in general) is a rather different problem. A single failure can cost thousands of lives, and huge knock-on effects, as we've sadly seen.
lawlorino 7y ago
I disagree, as I posted elsewhere in this thread these annual death rates are drawn from different distributions. The annual suicide rate is normally distributed, in other words the expected number of deaths will be around the same number each year. Terrorism and pandemics are long-tailed meaning a non-negligible probability that the rate shoots up to something much higher than your quoted two per year.

jbay808 7y ago

Suicide is a big problem, buy it's scary in a different way. I'm not personally worried about a suicide epidemic, or catching suicide from someone.

CydeWeys 7y ago
And yet there are actually suicide clusters, with people essentially "catching it" from their friends or loved ones who've committed suicide.
- keanzu 7y ago
  A copycat suicide is defined as an emulation of another suicide that the person attempting suicide knows about either from local knowledge or due to accounts or depictions of the original suicide on television and in other media. A spike of emulation suicides after a widely publicized suicide is known as the Werther effect. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copycat_suicide https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copycat_suicide Unbelievably you are correct. You can "catch it". Amazing.
- baddox 7y ago
  This seems like equivocation on the meaning of "catching it." Isolating yourself so that you either have no close relationships or somehow never hear about any suicides among your close relationships is a fairly nonsensical proposal, and probably wouldn't in fact decrease your chances of committing suicide.
  - catalogia 7y ago
    The realization that suicide has contagious properties does have practical ethical ramifications for journalism. It's not some impractical theoretical matter that can't be acted on.
    - totalZero 7y ago
      I went to a talk on this very matter. Kurt Cobain's suicide is an interesting case study on how journalism affects the development (or attenuation) of suicide clusters. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/8897665 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/8897665

ericb 7y ago

Why not? Because math. This is a contagion. Read about the Spanish Flu. This looks to be both more contagious, and more deadly in most of the published studies. We hope they are biased and overly pessimistic, but whataboutism isn't helpful here. Your argument is like if the rug in your living room is on fire, and you say "why worry about that rug--we should really invest in fixing that roof leak." I agree roof leaks are also bad.

Godel_unicode 7y ago
Here are the CDC burden (upper bound) estimates for the 2019-2020 flu season: 30 million infections, 30k deaths. In other words, 0.1% of infections are predicted to be fatal, which is substantially lower than the current estimates for 2019-nCoV. https://www.cdc.gov/flu/about/burden/preliminary-in-season-estimates.htm https://www.cdc.gov/flu/about/burden/preliminary-in-season-e...

endorphone 7y ago

These sorts of comparisons are, I would respectfully argue, not very helpful because the various causes of mortality are additive, not competing to kill the same victims (generally). We don't need a perpetual cycle of coronavirus in addition to the perpetual cycle of the flu that we already have, in addition to suicide and every other cause of death. The world's health organizations are trying desperately to curtail it before it becomes a norm. Which is why saying "Oh, why cancel this it's no biggie" is just so misled. If the world was in a situation where we could seriously contain and eliminate the flu, we would surely take every possible measure to do so.

anonuser123456 7y ago

The flu infects 30,000,000/year and kills 10,000. Given r0, the Covid-2019 would infect 60,000,000 and kill 1,000,000 if unchecked in the US.