8 ms·

Any successful containment measure will be later criticized as "too early" and/or "too aggressive". Much, much better than the alternative. H1N1 was serious a

by sub7 7y ago

Any successful containment measure will be later criticized as "too early" and/or "too aggressive". Much, much better than the alternative. H1N1 was serious and compared to this, well handled.

SpicyLemonZest 7y ago
Was it? Maybe my perception is skewed from being in one of the earliest countries hit, but my memory of H1N1 is that we pretty much gave up everything but vaccine development once we realized it was uncontainable.
StavrosK 7y ago
What was the difference between the handling of this and H1N1?
- tigershark 7y ago
  H1N1 was declared a pandemic but was not handled at at all and a huge amount of people got it, but luckily it was a joke of virus with 2 orders of magnitude less deaths than covid-19.
  - rimliu 7y ago
    Can you post exact numbers you are talking about?
ncallaway 7y ago
This is exactly right. Disease response can be very paradoxical. An extreme and early response, can turn a disease into a trivial event. Which raises questions about whether such an aggressive response is necessary. It can be, in many ways, like using an umbrella in a rainstorm. You get to the destination, and you're totally dry, so what was the point of the umbrella? With these disease outbreaks, there's no counterfactual we can run to see what would have happened if we didn't respond early.
tigershark 7y ago
No, it wasn’t. It had pretty much the same mortality rate as the normal flu.
ls612 7y ago
H1N1 was not successfully contained at all, it infected 15-20% of the world's population and ended up just being a bad flu strain, not a world ending pandemic as only 575k people died (for a mortality rate of around .05%)
Kiro 7y ago
What are you talking about? One billion people were infected by H1N1. It wasn't handled at all.
starfallg 7y ago
>H1N1 was serious and compared to this, well handled. The current COVID-19 epidemic caused by SARS-CoV-2 is many times more fatal than the 2009 H1N1 epidemic. The current epidemic has similar a fatality rate to the 1918 Spanish Flu. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2009_flu_pandemic https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2009_flu_pandemic
- fumar 7y ago
  Do you have citations for the “10X as fatal” comment? I am having a hard time understanding the situation because facts are hard to come by.
  - baq 7y ago
    go to /r/covid19 - it's one of the highest SNR about this clusterf* on the wide internet. plenty of CFR (case fatality ratio) estimation papers there.
  - mumblemumble 7y ago
    That Wiki link would serve as a citation. The table in the "comparisons to other pandemics and epidemics" section gives a point estimate for the case fatality rate of 0.03%. If we assume that the final rate for covid-19 is somewhere in the 1-2% range that's what I last heard, that would mean that "10X as fatal" is an understatement - more like 30-70x as fatal.
    - headmelted 7y ago
      About 240x as fatal. The mortality rate is presently 6.01% and fluctuating, making this virus about twice as deadly as the Spanish Flu.
      - zuminator 7y ago
        You've claimed this three times already. Do you have a substantiating link? Furthermore, saying "six point oh one percent" instead of just "approximately six percent" gives a false air of precision that could not possibly hold -- even you admit the estimate is still in flux.
adrr 7y ago
H1N1 mortality rate was 0.05% and that’s under rate of a standard flu season.
- andrejk 7y ago
  WHO had a good section in their situation report a few days ago comparing Covid-19 and the standard flu: https://www.who.int/docs/default-source/coronaviruse/situation-reports/20200306-sitrep-46-covid-19.pdf?sfvrsn=96b04adf_4 https://www.who.int/docs/default-source/coronaviruse/situati...
twistedanimator 7y ago
Yeah, it's like we're trying to find the correct balance between nonchalance and action. I for one lean towards nipping things in the bud and have been experiencing ever-increasing anxiety since I started watching Covid-19 in late January.
baddox 7y ago
Is there some guarantee that containment measures which are actually too early or too aggressive are "much, much better than the alternative?" It seems to me that such a claim is ignoring that there are actual costs to containment measures instead of actually comparing the costs of containment measures with the costs of delaying them.

by sub7 7y ago

Any successful containment measure will be later criticized as "too early" and/or "too aggressive". Much, much better than the alternative. H1N1 was serious and compared to this, well handled.

SpicyLemonZest 7y ago

Was it? Maybe my perception is skewed from being in one of the earliest countries hit, but my memory of H1N1 is that we pretty much gave up everything but vaccine development once we realized it was uncontainable.

StavrosK 7y ago

What was the difference between the handling of this and H1N1?

tigershark 7y ago
H1N1 was declared a pandemic but was not handled at at all and a huge amount of people got it, but luckily it was a joke of virus with 2 orders of magnitude less deaths than covid-19.
- rimliu 7y ago
  Can you post exact numbers you are talking about?

ncallaway 7y ago

This is exactly right. Disease response can be very paradoxical. An extreme and early response, can turn a disease into a trivial event. Which raises questions about whether such an aggressive response is necessary. It can be, in many ways, like using an umbrella in a rainstorm. You get to the destination, and you're totally dry, so what was the point of the umbrella? With these disease outbreaks, there's no counterfactual we can run to see what would have happened if we didn't respond early.

tigershark 7y ago

No, it wasn’t. It had pretty much the same mortality rate as the normal flu.

ls612 7y ago

H1N1 was not successfully contained at all, it infected 15-20% of the world's population and ended up just being a bad flu strain, not a world ending pandemic as only 575k people died (for a mortality rate of around .05%)

Kiro 7y ago

What are you talking about? One billion people were infected by H1N1. It wasn't handled at all.

starfallg 7y ago

>H1N1 was serious and compared to this, well handled. The current COVID-19 epidemic caused by SARS-CoV-2 is many times more fatal than the 2009 H1N1 epidemic. The current epidemic has similar a fatality rate to the 1918 Spanish Flu. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2009_flu_pandemic https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2009_flu_pandemic

fumar 7y ago
Do you have citations for the “10X as fatal” comment? I am having a hard time understanding the situation because facts are hard to come by.
- baq 7y ago
  go to /r/covid19 - it's one of the highest SNR about this clusterf* on the wide internet. plenty of CFR (case fatality ratio) estimation papers there.
- mumblemumble 7y ago
  That Wiki link would serve as a citation. The table in the "comparisons to other pandemics and epidemics" section gives a point estimate for the case fatality rate of 0.03%. If we assume that the final rate for covid-19 is somewhere in the 1-2% range that's what I last heard, that would mean that "10X as fatal" is an understatement - more like 30-70x as fatal.
  - headmelted 7y ago
    About 240x as fatal. The mortality rate is presently 6.01% and fluctuating, making this virus about twice as deadly as the Spanish Flu.
    - zuminator 7y ago
      You've claimed this three times already. Do you have a substantiating link? Furthermore, saying "six point oh one percent" instead of just "approximately six percent" gives a false air of precision that could not possibly hold -- even you admit the estimate is still in flux.

adrr 7y ago

H1N1 mortality rate was 0.05% and that’s under rate of a standard flu season.

andrejk 7y ago
WHO had a good section in their situation report a few days ago comparing Covid-19 and the standard flu: https://www.who.int/docs/default-source/coronaviruse/situation-reports/20200306-sitrep-46-covid-19.pdf?sfvrsn=96b04adf_4 https://www.who.int/docs/default-source/coronaviruse/situati...

twistedanimator 7y ago

Yeah, it's like we're trying to find the correct balance between nonchalance and action. I for one lean towards nipping things in the bud and have been experiencing ever-increasing anxiety since I started watching Covid-19 in late January.

baddox 7y ago

Is there some guarantee that containment measures which are actually too early or too aggressive are "much, much better than the alternative?" It seems to me that such a claim is ignoring that there are actual costs to containment measures instead of actually comparing the costs of containment measures with the costs of delaying them.