6 ms·
I feel fairly uncertain as to how seriously I should /personally/ take COVID19 living in a large American city as a healthy young person with no upcoming travel
by SirensOfTitan 7y ago
I feel fairly uncertain as to how seriously I should /personally/ take COVID19 living in a large American city as a healthy young person with no upcoming travel. I see some friends seriously taking precautions (like buying masks) already, which up-to-this-point I've found a little absurd. Could anyone who knows better perhaps enlighten me on how I ought to be reacting to this?
- WillPostForFood 7y agoBuy extra food so if you get sick you don't have to go out and infect other people, or if you are in an area with a lot of sick people you don't have to go out to bu food and get infected.
- JoeAltmaier 7y agoThat's a socially-conscious act and I applaud it. But in truth, before this is over every person on earth will have experienced the virus. The reason to control the spread and delay infection (not avoid it; that's probably impossible) is to allow the health-care infrastructure critical time to manage the flow of sick. If we all got sick at once, there'd be no capacity to treat 99.9% of us. If we spread it out over a year or more, we can treat more people and have a better outcome.
- SpicyLemonZest 7y agoThat's not typically how it works. Historical pandemics have only infected about 30% of the population.
- JoeAltmaier 7y agoThis one is air-borne with many days of no initial symptoms. That's the whole deal right there, why this is especially problematic.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- 0xffff2 7y agoThis is not correct. The virus is not airborne.
- JoeAltmaier 7y agoCarried in a sneeze or cough? What do we call it then?
- 0xffff2 7y agoAerosolized. The difference is important because the aerosolized virus only survives in the bodily fluids expelled by the sneeze/cough, which gives it a much, much shorter range than if it was actually airborne, which would imply that the virus could survive long enough to spread without the need for a bodily fluid to host it.
- downerending 7y agoYou probably won't die, esp since you're young, but it's certainly possible that you could get caught up in a quarantine. Best to have a good supply of any required drugs, etc.