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This is an excellent point. I'm from Israel, and yesterday it was announced that the first corona victim has died. The poor guy was 88 years old, suffered from

This is an excellent point. I'm from Israel, and yesterday it was announced that the first corona victim has died. The poor guy was 88 years old, suffered from multiple background illnesses - and suffered a heart attack a few days before he died - it so happens that in addition to all of the above he had corona. Now, honestly - is this REALLY a corona victim? Now check the data from Italy - most deaths were like that, and most of them could have equally died from the flu/common cold/brain stroke/just being old. How far and deep will this madness go?

bsaul 7y ago
i don't understand why you got downvoted. We don't consider someone dying from a cold if he's 80yo with heart attack. We're introducing a novel way of counting casualities, and this is problematic whenever we want to account for the severity of the virus. Now on the other side, hospitals usually aren't flooded the way they are at the moment, or at least that's my impression. So there is definitely something special about the epidemic (although we don't know why : maybe it's just extremely contagious, and makes everybody become sick about the same time, instead of a natural spread for the flu ?)
- greedo 7y ago
  If the heart attack was caused by the cold, we'd say the cold killed the person.
greedo 7y ago
Cardiac arrest has been noted as one of the results of COVID-19; it's not just the ARDS that gets you, but at some point, most terminal patients arrest.
marvin 7y ago
Let's for the sake of the argument ignore all the deaths that would happen with proper care, young and old alike. A low double-digit percentage of all identified cases require hospitalization to survive. A double-digit percentage of those will die if they don't get intensive care. 40-70% of the population is expected to contract the disease this year. It's not madness to take very strong measures to prevent that wave of hospitalizations from overwhelming the healthcare system. Most healthcare systems operate close to capacity, and people won't stop getting sick for other reasons while the epidemic is ongoing. This is the situation facing all countries with an advanced Covid19 epidemic. But hey, it's a free market. Maybe one or two free-world countries will go on with business as usual, and we will get to see in practice whether the rest of the world was excessively careful. I wouldn't want to stake my parents' health on that when all indications say otherwise, but maybe someone else is OK with the gamble.

bsaul 7y ago

i don't understand why you got downvoted. We don't consider someone dying from a cold if he's 80yo with heart attack. We're introducing a novel way of counting casualities, and this is problematic whenever we want to account for the severity of the virus. Now on the other side, hospitals usually aren't flooded the way they are at the moment, or at least that's my impression. So there is definitely something special about the epidemic (although we don't know why : maybe it's just extremely contagious, and makes everybody become sick about the same time, instead of a natural spread for the flu ?)

greedo 7y ago
If the heart attack was caused by the cold, we'd say the cold killed the person.

greedo 7y ago

Cardiac arrest has been noted as one of the results of COVID-19; it's not just the ARDS that gets you, but at some point, most terminal patients arrest.

marvin 7y ago

Let's for the sake of the argument ignore all the deaths that would happen with proper care, young and old alike. A low double-digit percentage of all identified cases require hospitalization to survive. A double-digit percentage of those will die if they don't get intensive care. 40-70% of the population is expected to contract the disease this year. It's not madness to take very strong measures to prevent that wave of hospitalizations from overwhelming the healthcare system. Most healthcare systems operate close to capacity, and people won't stop getting sick for other reasons while the epidemic is ongoing. This is the situation facing all countries with an advanced Covid19 epidemic. But hey, it's a free market. Maybe one or two free-world countries will go on with business as usual, and we will get to see in practice whether the rest of the world was excessively careful. I wouldn't want to stake my parents' health on that when all indications say otherwise, but maybe someone else is OK with the gamble.