3 ms·

So why didn't people do this back in 2009? https://www.cdc.gov/flu/pandemic-resources/2009-h1n1-pandemic.html https://www.cdc.gov/flu/pandemic-resources/2009-h

So why didn't people do this back in 2009? https://www.cdc.gov/flu/pandemic-resources/2009-h1n1-pandemic.html https://www.cdc.gov/flu/pandemic-resources/2009-h1n1-pandemi... Or back in 2014? https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/to-your-health/wp/2014/12/30/this-seasons-flu-activity-has-reached-the-epidemic-threshold-the-cdc-says/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/to-your-health/wp/2014/1... Why is the world taking such an extreme reaction towards a disease that's less deadly and infectious than ones from 5 and 11 years ago where there wasn't an air of extreme hostility directed towards people for not worrying? Is it because the name is scarier? Is it because it's not a flu but a coronavirus? Because I still remember those, those were genuinely scary, mortality rates were high for healthy people, there were millions of cases around the world, and it was highly infectious. Yet, there was no massive global quarantine, the world didn't end, and life went on. Why should a disease that is less bad in every conceivable way be so much more panic inducing?

noja 7y ago
> Why should a disease that is less bad in every conceivable way be so much more panic inducing? Because it's worse in every way: the initial containment has failed, the base immunity does not exist, the transmission rate is much higher, and the virus is more deadly.
- grawprog 7y ago
  >and the virus is more deadly. Explain this, because this is the part I just can't wrap my head around. How is a disease that's deadly towards a much smaller percentage of the population 'more deadly'. Children aren't affected, anyone under the age of 60 is mildly affected barring pre-existing health problems. How is that more deadly than, a 30% mortality rate for young otherwise healthy individuals in the case of 2009's pandemic?
  - noja 7y ago
    Don't forget containment failed.
    - grawprog 7y ago
      Normally a comment like yours lacking any kind of reasonable explanation or arguement would be against hn's rules, but I'm assuming in this time of crisis this will be ignored. That doesn't explain how it's more deadly. More deadly implies it kills more people faster. This is very much not the case no matter how much it's spread and by comparison, it's still contained more than both of those other pandemics were. Those each affected millions of people over a few months. https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/ https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/ We're at 167,543 with a total of 76,590 recoveries as of this comment. For a website full of people used to dealing with big numbers there sure seems to be a lot of blind just ignoring of said numbers in exchange for emotional reaction.
      - gridlockd 7y ago
        By the rate of mortality, it kills way more people than H1N1 or the 2014 flu. By the rate of infection, it infects more people than SARS or MERS and already has done so. None of these diseases managed to overwhelm the healthcare system of a developed nation like Italy. Clearly, the potential danger is therefore far greater than any of those "closed cases". Furthermore, the "deadliest" viruses in terms of rate and velocity of death are not as dangerous to the population as a whole, because most of the infected people fall over dead before infecting anyone else. > We're at 167,543 with a total of 76,590 recoveries as of this comment. We're also doubling the number of cases every 2.5 days in those countries that haven't managed to contain the spread. In Italy, that number (~20,000) has exceeded the capacity of the healthcare system.
  - gridlockd 7y ago
    Mortality in 2009 was 0.03%, not 30%.
  - greedo 7y ago
    This site (https://ourworldindata.org/coronavirus https://ourworldindata.org/coronavirus) has an excellent chart comparing the severity of COVID-19 vs the flu: For all ages, it's basically 12-24x more lethal than the flu. For 0-19, 12 to 25x For 20-49, 6-16x For 50-59, 9-21x For 60+, 4-7x
ramraj07 7y ago
From your own link, H1N1 seems to have a mortality of 0.017% for the entire US population. No matter how you slice and dice the current numbers, the mortality is an order of magnitude higher if not multiples. And perhaps you don't have any not-doing-well old people in your life or you don't care much for them, but for folks who have such people, it's doubly scary because clearly the mortality is in the single digits percentage for those people.
freepor 7y ago
The transmission numbers for this disease seem to be much higher than for H1N1. I don’t think it’s yet known whether that’s because it takes less exposure or because more people are susceptible. Also, this virus may be as deadly in Africa as H1N1... but Southeast Asia seems to have learned good lessons from 2009 and been better prepared. People are locking down to AVOID a 2009 rerun.
ThePhysicist 7y ago
This is an entirely different situation. MERS & SARS were never spreading at an exponential rate in almost every country of the world (which Covid-19 currently is), and even the countries of origin were able to contain the outbreaks rather quickly. Corona will probably never "go away" again unless we want to fundamentally change the way we live (which I think won't happen), so the only option right now is to slow the spread until more research has be done and the infrastructure has been built up to deal with severe cases.

noja 7y ago

> Why should a disease that is less bad in every conceivable way be so much more panic inducing? Because it's worse in every way: the initial containment has failed, the base immunity does not exist, the transmission rate is much higher, and the virus is more deadly.

grawprog 7y ago
>and the virus is more deadly. Explain this, because this is the part I just can't wrap my head around. How is a disease that's deadly towards a much smaller percentage of the population 'more deadly'. Children aren't affected, anyone under the age of 60 is mildly affected barring pre-existing health problems. How is that more deadly than, a 30% mortality rate for young otherwise healthy individuals in the case of 2009's pandemic?
- noja 7y ago
  Don't forget containment failed.
  - grawprog 7y ago
    Normally a comment like yours lacking any kind of reasonable explanation or arguement would be against hn's rules, but I'm assuming in this time of crisis this will be ignored. That doesn't explain how it's more deadly. More deadly implies it kills more people faster. This is very much not the case no matter how much it's spread and by comparison, it's still contained more than both of those other pandemics were. Those each affected millions of people over a few months. https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/ https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/ We're at 167,543 with a total of 76,590 recoveries as of this comment. For a website full of people used to dealing with big numbers there sure seems to be a lot of blind just ignoring of said numbers in exchange for emotional reaction.
    - gridlockd 7y ago
      By the rate of mortality, it kills way more people than H1N1 or the 2014 flu. By the rate of infection, it infects more people than SARS or MERS and already has done so. None of these diseases managed to overwhelm the healthcare system of a developed nation like Italy. Clearly, the potential danger is therefore far greater than any of those "closed cases". Furthermore, the "deadliest" viruses in terms of rate and velocity of death are not as dangerous to the population as a whole, because most of the infected people fall over dead before infecting anyone else. > We're at 167,543 with a total of 76,590 recoveries as of this comment. We're also doubling the number of cases every 2.5 days in those countries that haven't managed to contain the spread. In Italy, that number (~20,000) has exceeded the capacity of the healthcare system.
- gridlockd 7y ago
  Mortality in 2009 was 0.03%, not 30%.
- greedo 7y ago
  This site (https://ourworldindata.org/coronavirus https://ourworldindata.org/coronavirus) has an excellent chart comparing the severity of COVID-19 vs the flu: For all ages, it's basically 12-24x more lethal than the flu. For 0-19, 12 to 25x For 20-49, 6-16x For 50-59, 9-21x For 60+, 4-7x

ramraj07 7y ago

From your own link, H1N1 seems to have a mortality of 0.017% for the entire US population. No matter how you slice and dice the current numbers, the mortality is an order of magnitude higher if not multiples. And perhaps you don't have any not-doing-well old people in your life or you don't care much for them, but for folks who have such people, it's doubly scary because clearly the mortality is in the single digits percentage for those people.

freepor 7y ago

The transmission numbers for this disease seem to be much higher than for H1N1. I don’t think it’s yet known whether that’s because it takes less exposure or because more people are susceptible. Also, this virus may be as deadly in Africa as H1N1... but Southeast Asia seems to have learned good lessons from 2009 and been better prepared. People are locking down to AVOID a 2009 rerun.

ThePhysicist 7y ago

This is an entirely different situation. MERS & SARS were never spreading at an exponential rate in almost every country of the world (which Covid-19 currently is), and even the countries of origin were able to contain the outbreaks rather quickly. Corona will probably never "go away" again unless we want to fundamentally change the way we live (which I think won't happen), so the only option right now is to slow the spread until more research has be done and the infrastructure has been built up to deal with severe cases.