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It's good to keep things in perspective. Our grandparents lived through worse than the upper limit of what is projected for this virus. The virus is a terrible
by asdfasgasdgasdg 7y ago
It's good to keep things in perspective. Our grandparents lived through worse than the upper limit of what is projected for this virus. The virus is a terrible thing, and we need to fight, but at least it's not Spanish Flu/The Great Depression/World War II/The Cultural Revolution/...
- tome 7y agoGiven how simple[1] coronavirus would be to solve if people took it seriously and opted to socially distance as much as possible, it's rather sad that we're bounding how terrible it will be by the some of worst catastrophes ever to be suffered by humanity rather than by something like a recession. [1] simple, but not necessarily painless
- rebuilder 7y agoRecessions kill people, too. Suicide rates go up, healthcare suffers, poverty worsens.
- graeme 7y agoAn enormous outbreak seems likely to cause a recession. The economy is people. People get sick and die, the economy suffers.
- TheOtherHobbes 7y agoIt's almost as if we're incapable of creating a planetary economy that can handle shocks with robustness and resilience.
- graeme 7y agoPeople often harp on this point, but plagues travelled the globe long before globalization. They just moved a bit slower from area to area. But they were quite devastating in less connected ages.
- tome 7y agoYes, this is all true.
- UncleOxidant 7y agoDeprive the fire of it's fuel and it goes out. In this case the fuel is people and the virus is the fire. If nearly everyone isolated themselves in their homes for a 2 or 3 weeks the virus would run out of people to infect. Essentially what they had to do in Wuhan. We aren't taking it seriously enough in the West to do this.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- AnimalMuppet 7y agoThe problem is, though, that we live in a very connected world. If absolutely everyone, worldwide, isolated themselves, then yes, the virus would die out. But if everyone does so except Iran, say, or Oklahoma, then Iran or Oklahoma reinfect the world and everyone has to do it again.
- tome 7y agoYes, and maybe we have to ban travel from Iran(!) or Oklahoma until they cooperate.
- AnimalMuppet 7y agoOklahoma would be very hard. Iran would be easier for us... but not for Iraq. You probably couldn't prohibit travel from Iraq into Syria. And so it goes...
- watwut 7y agoI mean, being better then WWII is not much of consolation ...
- ken 7y agoWars tend to give economic growth and technological advancement as consolation prizes, though. I don't see that happening here. I hope we can get at least an improved public health system out of it, but I fear we won't get even that.
- arethuza 7y agoWorth noting that the UK pretty much got the NHS because of WW2.
- watwut 7y agoWhile WWII gave economic advantage to united states, places where it happened were destroyed and in loss. Wars are economic advantage also if you get to get colony you can exploit - but colony looses a lot. Syria gained no growth. Places that got destabilized by war and became great playground for local warlords got no growth. Wars are pretty much catastrophy for most involved.
- TeMPOraL 7y agoThat's survivorship bias, though. Those of us whose grandparents didn't live through it were never born and aren't here to voice their opinion.
- jungturk 7y agoThe mortality rates suggest that many of those who succumbed to the Spanish flu would have died after having children. http://www.influenzavirusnet.com/1918-flu-pandemic/mortality.html http://www.influenzavirusnet.com/1918-flu-pandemic/mortality...
- alltakendamned 7y agoActually it is worse than Spanish flu. Mortality rate for the Spanish flu is estimated at 2-3% according to the WHO. COVID-19 currently stands at 3.4-3.6%. We do have the advantage maybe that the world today is better prepared at handling this kind of events, but we're only just 50 days in, the Spanish flu ended up lasting 2 years. Source Spanish flu: https://apps.who.int/iris/bitstream/handle/10665/44123/9789241547680_eng.pdf https://apps.who.int/iris/bitstream/handle/10665/44123/97892... Source COVID-19: https://www.who.int/dg/speeches/detail/who-director-general-s-opening-remarks-at-the-media-briefing-on-covid-19---3-march-2020 https://www.who.int/dg/speeches/detail/who-director-general-...
- huhtenberg 7y ago> COVID-19 currently stands at 3.4-3.6%. Not according to other studies that covered people with no obvious symptoms. https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/health-environment/article/3065187/coronavirus-south-koreas-aggressive-testing-gives https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/health-environment/article/30... 0.6%
- TheOtherHobbes 7y agoThere's been consistent - IMO unprofessional - confusion between Case Fatality Ratio and Population Mortality. The >1% numbers are all CFRs, calculated from diagnosed cases. They don't account for people with no symptoms, or those who aren't tested. It's very hard to estimate unmodified population mortality, because the real numbers are lowered by quarantine measures and health care. But real population mortality seems set to be well under 1%, with the bulk of deaths among the over the 60s, heavily skewed to the over 80s. That's hardly trivial, but it's a long way off the 240 million who would die if the population mortality really were around 3%.
- rsynnott 7y agoNote that diagnosis of the Spanish flu would also not have been complete. Actually, it was almost certainly worse; I don't believe they then had much of a test beyond "do they have the classic symptoms".
- 7y ago
- bryanrasmussen 7y agoSure, it isn't every bad thing your grandparents survived, but I think it might turn out to be worse than Spanish Flu.
- dTal 7y ago>Our grandparents lived through worse Holy sampling bias, Batman! Our ancestors survived the K-T extinction event too.
- brink 7y agoI'll take COVID-19 over Polio.
- SketchySeaBeast 7y agoWhich is unfortunate for many of the boomers - they get both!