7 ms·

nCOV/COVID-19 is not a flu let alone "a very mild flu" stop spreading this bullshit.

by throwaway2048 7y ago

mschuster91 7y ago
For healthy young people, covid19 is a mild-ish flu. The ones in danger are their parents and grandparents, which is why Italy has been hit so hard - many young people still live with their families in cramped conditions because they cannot afford renting or much less owning their own places. Probably it will become a huge problem in the US too, with the added difficulty that even seniors often have to work to survive and there not being a properly funded healthcare and sick leave system.
- easytiger 7y ago
  Yes. Italy experienced 24k deaths in the 16/17 influenza season alone. But we didn't try to annihilate the global status quo to contain it.
  - empath75 7y ago
    https://twitter.com/jasonvanschoor/status/1237144089855963136?s=21 https://twitter.com/jasonvanschoor/status/123714408985596313... Read this thread about what is happening in Italy. That’s a preview of what the rest of the world will be dealing with in the next three weeks.
    - hef19898 7y ago
      Ah, that thread again. Why not linking the official statement? Which by the way confirms a lot of the thread but in a way less dramatic manner.
- DalasNoin 7y ago
  Here is a report of a 21 year old, seems like more than a mild flu https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/feb/29/to-hell-and-back-my-three-weeks-suffering-from-coronavirus https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/feb/29/to-hell-and-ba...
  - easytiger 7y ago
    As i said, the majority of people will experience mild symptoms. This poor chap clearly had a pneumonia complication. Do you have interviews with people, the majority, who presented mild symptoms or indeed none? I had a virus and very high fever and was bedridden in early Jan. I don't recall being interviewed by the global press.
    - mcbits 7y ago
      No matter how mild, the majority of cases need to be locked in a room for 2-4 weeks (because they're too flippant to be trusted to do it themselves) to prevent spreading to the other 20%+ who face permanent organ damage or worse. This isn't something that will simply kill a few hundred thousand at a cost of a couple hundred billion dollars like the flu if it's allowed to run its course through the population.
    - hef19898 7y ago
      Yeah, you are so right. What realy bothers me in the way people, on HN, TV wherever, is treating numbers. You try that at one famous FAANG company and once to often, meaning a third time, and you can consider yourself lucky to just end up on a PIP. Everbody is using the selection bias of both, testing and reporting, to confirm their own biases. Experts are not heard or ignored.
      - deleted 7y ago
        [deleted]
  - mlang23 7y ago
    Reading this doesn't really induce panic. I've had worse infections where I did not seek medical help either. I particularily remember an illness roughly two years ago which took 3 weeks to get cured. It was so strong that it fucked with my consciousness for at least a week, time distortions and similar effects. I feel like I am prepared by life.
    - rsynnott 7y ago
- jacobolus 7y ago
  You need to add a critical “some” before “healthy young people”. For some people, it is possible to go through a whole course of coronavirus without ever showing any noticeable symptoms at all, or nothing distinguishable from a typical cold, and come out the other end immune. For example here are 2 exceptionally mild cases https://wwwnc.cdc.gov/eid/article/26/6/20-0452_article https://wwwnc.cdc.gov/eid/article/26/6/20-0452_article But for some others, it is a hellishly bad experience which causes weeks of awful symptoms (e.g. only breathing via a mechanical ventilator), and for some healthy young people it even results in severe pneumonia leading to speedy death. For example https://newyork.cbslocal.com/2020/03/09/coronavirus-update-new-jersey-patient-speaks-out/ https://newyork.cbslocal.com/2020/03/09/coronavirus-update-n... > The 32-year-old physician’s assistant, a non-smoker with no underlying health conditions, believes he contracted it while attending a medical conference in Times Square last weekend, saying the coronavirus spread quickly to both his lungs. > “The virus is everything. Dirarrhea, watery eyes, shortness of breath, chest pain, you name it. High fever,” he said. “Every day is getting worse.” > “It happened so quick,” he said.
- Symmetry 7y ago
  First, it's about an order of magnitude worse in terms of effects than the flu on average. The "mild" category for Covid-19 includes walking pneunomia which is very much no fun and much more unpleasant than a normal flu, though you can stay at home and ride it out unlike the "severe" or "critical" covid-19 symptoms which require a hospital and oxygen for the severe cases or serious ICU measures for the "critical" cases. Second, it's a lot more transmissable than the flu and nobody is vaccinated against it. So while flu hospitalizations are going to be spread out across months if we just let Covid-19 run it's course half the population will end up being infected at some particular week. And 10% of people will need hopsitalization. And our hospitals can't cope with anything like that number of people and you'll be seeing a lot more than the default 1% of those infected die. We really need to take this seriously. EDIT: I misremembered mild/severe/critical as mild/moderate/severe then corrected it.
- SkyPuncher 7y ago
  nCov is 20x more deadly than the flu across all age ranges. Young People * Flue - 0.01% death rate * nCov - 0.2% death rate (I am struggling to source this, I read it in the past week in a graph of a study and have had a very hard time tracking that study back down).
  - SkyPuncher 7y ago
    Found my source: https://www.businessinsider.com/coronavirus-compared-to-flu-mortality-rates-2020-3 https://www.businessinsider.com/coronavirus-compared-to-flu-...
pvaldes 7y ago
Talking about side effects seems a fair point
- throwaway2048 7y ago
  Anyone dismissing it as a "mild flu" is repeating seriously dangerous misinformation and the cop out of it being about "side effects for some people" is incredibly weak.
  - pvaldes 7y ago
    It does not matter if is mild or not for the point raised, that is a important one: Side effects of a experimental treatment can be worse than the disease. Even if the disease is severe. HIV is an example of a really bad problem that can be cured, but the procedure is so risky that normally it doesn't worth the try. Cancer is a huge problem, but some people are almost insta-killed by chemoterapy for genetical reasons. There is not point into trying every snake oil available without taking in mind the side effects. And for some groups of age, like children, yes: coronavirus currently is equivalent to a mild flu. Under 20 years old the mortality is relatively low, and for children is minimal. The coronavirus problem is not homogeneous. Is very dangerous for some people, specially when team with other previous diseases, and not so dangerous for other. The idea of treating children with a non tested treatment is ethically problematic at this moment.
    - easytiger 7y ago
      That was just indeed my point. Thanks. But reasonableness not accepted here

nCOV/COVID-19 is not a flu let alone "a very mild flu" stop spreading this bullshit.

For healthy young people, covid19 is a mild-ish flu. The ones in danger are their parents and grandparents, which is why Italy has been hit so hard - many young people still live with their families in cramped conditions because they cannot afford renting or much less owning their own places. Probably it will become a huge problem in the US too, with the added difficulty that even seniors often have to work to survive and there not being a properly funded healthcare and sick leave system.

easytiger 7y ago
Yes. Italy experienced 24k deaths in the 16/17 influenza season alone. But we didn't try to annihilate the global status quo to contain it.
- empath75 7y ago
  https://twitter.com/jasonvanschoor/status/1237144089855963136?s=21 https://twitter.com/jasonvanschoor/status/123714408985596313... Read this thread about what is happening in Italy. That’s a preview of what the rest of the world will be dealing with in the next three weeks.
  - hef19898 7y ago
    Ah, that thread again. Why not linking the official statement? Which by the way confirms a lot of the thread but in a way less dramatic manner.
DalasNoin 7y ago
Here is a report of a 21 year old, seems like more than a mild flu https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/feb/29/to-hell-and-back-my-three-weeks-suffering-from-coronavirus https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/feb/29/to-hell-and-ba...
- easytiger 7y ago
  As i said, the majority of people will experience mild symptoms. This poor chap clearly had a pneumonia complication. Do you have interviews with people, the majority, who presented mild symptoms or indeed none? I had a virus and very high fever and was bedridden in early Jan. I don't recall being interviewed by the global press.
  - mcbits 7y ago
    No matter how mild, the majority of cases need to be locked in a room for 2-4 weeks (because they're too flippant to be trusted to do it themselves) to prevent spreading to the other 20%+ who face permanent organ damage or worse. This isn't something that will simply kill a few hundred thousand at a cost of a couple hundred billion dollars like the flu if it's allowed to run its course through the population.
  - hef19898 7y ago
    Yeah, you are so right. What realy bothers me in the way people, on HN, TV wherever, is treating numbers. You try that at one famous FAANG company and once to often, meaning a third time, and you can consider yourself lucky to just end up on a PIP. Everbody is using the selection bias of both, testing and reporting, to confirm their own biases. Experts are not heard or ignored.
    - deleted 7y ago
      [deleted]
- mlang23 7y ago
  Reading this doesn't really induce panic. I've had worse infections where I did not seek medical help either. I particularily remember an illness roughly two years ago which took 3 weeks to get cured. It was so strong that it fucked with my consciousness for at least a week, time distortions and similar effects. I feel like I am prepared by life.
  - rsynnott 7y ago
jacobolus 7y ago
You need to add a critical “some” before “healthy young people”. For some people, it is possible to go through a whole course of coronavirus without ever showing any noticeable symptoms at all, or nothing distinguishable from a typical cold, and come out the other end immune. For example here are 2 exceptionally mild cases https://wwwnc.cdc.gov/eid/article/26/6/20-0452_article https://wwwnc.cdc.gov/eid/article/26/6/20-0452_article But for some others, it is a hellishly bad experience which causes weeks of awful symptoms (e.g. only breathing via a mechanical ventilator), and for some healthy young people it even results in severe pneumonia leading to speedy death. For example https://newyork.cbslocal.com/2020/03/09/coronavirus-update-new-jersey-patient-speaks-out/ https://newyork.cbslocal.com/2020/03/09/coronavirus-update-n... > The 32-year-old physician’s assistant, a non-smoker with no underlying health conditions, believes he contracted it while attending a medical conference in Times Square last weekend, saying the coronavirus spread quickly to both his lungs. > “The virus is everything. Dirarrhea, watery eyes, shortness of breath, chest pain, you name it. High fever,” he said. “Every day is getting worse.” > “It happened so quick,” he said.
Symmetry 7y ago
First, it's about an order of magnitude worse in terms of effects than the flu on average. The "mild" category for Covid-19 includes walking pneunomia which is very much no fun and much more unpleasant than a normal flu, though you can stay at home and ride it out unlike the "severe" or "critical" covid-19 symptoms which require a hospital and oxygen for the severe cases or serious ICU measures for the "critical" cases. Second, it's a lot more transmissable than the flu and nobody is vaccinated against it. So while flu hospitalizations are going to be spread out across months if we just let Covid-19 run it's course half the population will end up being infected at some particular week. And 10% of people will need hopsitalization. And our hospitals can't cope with anything like that number of people and you'll be seeing a lot more than the default 1% of those infected die. We really need to take this seriously. EDIT: I misremembered mild/severe/critical as mild/moderate/severe then corrected it.
SkyPuncher 7y ago
nCov is 20x more deadly than the flu across all age ranges. Young People * Flue - 0.01% death rate * nCov - 0.2% death rate (I am struggling to source this, I read it in the past week in a graph of a study and have had a very hard time tracking that study back down).
- SkyPuncher 7y ago
  Found my source: https://www.businessinsider.com/coronavirus-compared-to-flu-mortality-rates-2020-3 https://www.businessinsider.com/coronavirus-compared-to-flu-...

pvaldes 7y ago

Talking about side effects seems a fair point

throwaway2048 7y ago
Anyone dismissing it as a "mild flu" is repeating seriously dangerous misinformation and the cop out of it being about "side effects for some people" is incredibly weak.
- pvaldes 7y ago
  It does not matter if is mild or not for the point raised, that is a important one: Side effects of a experimental treatment can be worse than the disease. Even if the disease is severe. HIV is an example of a really bad problem that can be cured, but the procedure is so risky that normally it doesn't worth the try. Cancer is a huge problem, but some people are almost insta-killed by chemoterapy for genetical reasons. There is not point into trying every snake oil available without taking in mind the side effects. And for some groups of age, like children, yes: coronavirus currently is equivalent to a mild flu. Under 20 years old the mortality is relatively low, and for children is minimal. The coronavirus problem is not homogeneous. Is very dangerous for some people, specially when team with other previous diseases, and not so dangerous for other. The idea of treating children with a non tested treatment is ethically problematic at this moment.
  - easytiger 7y ago
    That was just indeed my point. Thanks. But reasonableness not accepted here