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I've seen "pandemic experts" say some dumb stuff too. Like declaring that the death rate to be reported deaths / reported cases without a single acknowledgemen

by brink 7y ago

I've seen "pandemic experts" say some dumb stuff too. Like declaring that the death rate to be reported deaths / reported cases without a single acknowledgement of the drove of cases that go unreported, or declaring that we should completely shut down for five weeks like this is Ebola and the virus will just disappear and won't go on another tear after the five weeks are over. To be clear, I support the partial shutdown and taking measures to slow the spread. I'm just annoyed by those who think we can stop the virus from spreading completely if we just try hard enough. It's unrealistic.

api 7y ago
You don't see the whole picture. The problem is that this thing DDOSes the medical system, causing a spike in deaths beyond what the system can handle as well as increased all cause mortality as emergency care becomes unavailable. It may be no more deadly than the flu with appropriate care, but many more people seem to require that care than the flu. This is probably because it goes after the respiratory system, causing issues that require costly and labor intensive intervention. The flu might make you feel like total shit but it generally does not mess with respiration much, allowing many more patients to just wait it out in bed. Italy has more hospital beds per capita than the US. Check out their condition. You have to look at whole systems and the long game. Quarantine is about keeping the medical system up until we have drugs and hopefully vaccines not only developed but in production. Elon is great at whole systems analysis. Not sure why he can't see this.
- brink 7y ago
  They are also far more population dense than the US. Viruses love close contact. Like I said earlier, I support slowing it down. But there is a balance.
  - belltaco 7y ago
    There are huge metropolitan areas in the US that are very dense, and work places and shopping is very dense, so is mass transit. Plus a lot more routinely commute every day for work more than 50 miles one way. People also fly and drive a lot betwen cities. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_North_American_metropolitan_areas_by_population https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_North_American_metropo...
- belltaco 7y ago
  Also a good 50% or more of people are immune to the flu at any given time because they got it in the last few years, while pretty much no one is immune to this one.

by brink 7y ago

api 7y ago

You don't see the whole picture. The problem is that this thing DDOSes the medical system, causing a spike in deaths beyond what the system can handle as well as increased all cause mortality as emergency care becomes unavailable. It may be no more deadly than the flu with appropriate care, but many more people seem to require that care than the flu. This is probably because it goes after the respiratory system, causing issues that require costly and labor intensive intervention. The flu might make you feel like total shit but it generally does not mess with respiration much, allowing many more patients to just wait it out in bed. Italy has more hospital beds per capita than the US. Check out their condition. You have to look at whole systems and the long game. Quarantine is about keeping the medical system up until we have drugs and hopefully vaccines not only developed but in production. Elon is great at whole systems analysis. Not sure why he can't see this.

brink 7y ago
They are also far more population dense than the US. Viruses love close contact. Like I said earlier, I support slowing it down. But there is a balance.
- belltaco 7y ago
  There are huge metropolitan areas in the US that are very dense, and work places and shopping is very dense, so is mass transit. Plus a lot more routinely commute every day for work more than 50 miles one way. People also fly and drive a lot betwen cities. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_North_American_metropolitan_areas_by_population https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_North_American_metropo...
belltaco 7y ago
Also a good 50% or more of people are immune to the flu at any given time because they got it in the last few years, while pretty much no one is immune to this one.