4 ms·

A couple generations ago there were “Measles Parties” to expose kids to measles because it was not risky to children. This was before a vaccine was available, a

by zaroth 7y ago

A couple generations ago there were “Measles Parties” to expose kids to measles because it was not risky to children. This was before a vaccine was available, and made sense at the time to build herd immunity. Until a vaccine is available, as someone over 35, and who has parents who are 70/72, I want as many 0-55 year olds to get COVID as soon as possible to establish herd immunity and ultimately limit the risk to the elderly population. The 0-55 population by and large isn’t going to the ICU when they get exposed to this coronavirus. Most will report that they “don’t even know they had it”. After they get it, the data we have shows that they won’t be able to get it again, or spread it.

ec109685 7y ago
What’s stopping all those <55 year olds from giving it to >55?
- zaroth 7y ago
  Self isolation on the part of the at-risk population.
- war1025 7y ago
  lockdown of at risk populations
lazyasciiart 7y ago
This is incredibly uninformed. It doesn’t matter what happens “by and large”. There aren’t enough hospital beds for even a minority of them.
- zaroth 7y ago
  Of course it matters. If a disease is not particularly dangerous to a certain demographic, then that demographic by definition cannot overwhelm scarce ICU resources.
  - lazyasciiart 7y ago
    Not true at all. If 0.2% of Americans between the age of 15 and 55 want to go to hospital before they die of coronavirus, that's 350,000 people. In the entire country there are about 800,000 hospital beds - of which maybe 45,000 are ICU beds. And those hospitals aren't sitting there empty waiting for coronavirus patients to arrive, they average 2/3 beds in use. So, even if we pretend that the hospitalization rate is as low as the fatality rate, and they just need to be inside a hospital and not inside the ICU, we are already short by 100,000 beds. Sounds like overwhelmed to me.
    - zaroth 7y ago
      There hasn’t been a single COVID fatality of someone under 20 that I know of. In the entire world. There is not a 0.2% fatality rate in the 0-45 demographic. Even 45-55 is probably less than 0.1%.
      - yibg 7y ago
        https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/coronavirus-age-sex-demographics/ https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/coronavirus-age-se... No fatalities under 10, but 10 - 19 has fatality of 0.2%. 0.2 of the entire 10-19 population is a huge number.
        zaroth 7y ago
        That number is not what you think it is. The case fatality rate is the number of deaths divided by the number of known cases (positive tests). What you are looking for is the IFR (infection fatality rate) which is not known, because of the number of infections in the 10-19 population which were asymptomatic or too mild to be tested. It’s extremely telling, for example, that 99.9% of fatalities in Italy as of two days ago were 50+. Surely that is not because no one under 50 was infected, particularly since the younger population is more likely to be congregating at bars and clubs. I’m happy to throw away karma to call out anyone multiplying a naive CFR by a population number every time. It’s totally incorrect to do that.

by zaroth 7y ago

ec109685 7y ago

What’s stopping all those <55 year olds from giving it to >55?

zaroth 7y ago
Self isolation on the part of the at-risk population.
war1025 7y ago
lockdown of at risk populations

lazyasciiart 7y ago

This is incredibly uninformed. It doesn’t matter what happens “by and large”. There aren’t enough hospital beds for even a minority of them.

zaroth 7y ago
Of course it matters. If a disease is not particularly dangerous to a certain demographic, then that demographic by definition cannot overwhelm scarce ICU resources.
- lazyasciiart 7y ago
  Not true at all. If 0.2% of Americans between the age of 15 and 55 want to go to hospital before they die of coronavirus, that's 350,000 people. In the entire country there are about 800,000 hospital beds - of which maybe 45,000 are ICU beds. And those hospitals aren't sitting there empty waiting for coronavirus patients to arrive, they average 2/3 beds in use. So, even if we pretend that the hospitalization rate is as low as the fatality rate, and they just need to be inside a hospital and not inside the ICU, we are already short by 100,000 beds. Sounds like overwhelmed to me.
  - zaroth 7y ago
    There hasn’t been a single COVID fatality of someone under 20 that I know of. In the entire world. There is not a 0.2% fatality rate in the 0-45 demographic. Even 45-55 is probably less than 0.1%.
    - yibg 7y ago
      https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/coronavirus-age-sex-demographics/ https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/coronavirus-age-se... No fatalities under 10, but 10 - 19 has fatality of 0.2%. 0.2 of the entire 10-19 population is a huge number.
      - zaroth 7y ago
        That number is not what you think it is. The case fatality rate is the number of deaths divided by the number of known cases (positive tests). What you are looking for is the IFR (infection fatality rate) which is not known, because of the number of infections in the 10-19 population which were asymptomatic or too mild to be tested. It’s extremely telling, for example, that 99.9% of fatalities in Italy as of two days ago were 50+. Surely that is not because no one under 50 was infected, particularly since the younger population is more likely to be congregating at bars and clubs. I’m happy to throw away karma to call out anyone multiplying a naive CFR by a population number every time. It’s totally incorrect to do that.