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Yeah, let me rephrase. COVID is the deadliest thing most people will ever have a chance of coming into contact with, you'll spread it to others before you even

Yeah, let me rephrase. COVID is the deadliest thing most people will ever have a chance of coming into contact with, you'll spread it to others before you even know you have it, thus it's almost certain you won't be the only one "taking the risk". It's not like driving, flying, takeaway, or any other inane, minimizing comparison. It is a highly infectious, stealthy, lethal pathogen. If we let everyone get it, at even .5% fatality rate, that's millions and millions of people dead just in the US alone. It kills everyone, infants, the elderly, the healthy, the comorbid, just at different rates. Here is what you should do: - shelter in place - if you must go out, wear masks and gloves, stay at least six feet away from others if possible, and wash your hands thoroughly when you return - lots of places need volunteers, please help them if you can and follow their safety protocols - donate money to funds for responders and local business/community relief Here's what you shouldn't do: - flout shelter in place orders - minimize the risk in public forums - engage in armchair epidemiology; this isn't like having an opinion on tabs vs spaces I'm sympathetic to (indeed terrified by) the economic destruction of this, and I know it's happening right now. Let's stay alive and keep each other alive first. We'll figure the rest out later.

hartator 7y ago
That’s actually not true. We are talking 0.2-0.3% lethality which is still a lot but it will bellow 250k deaths even if we are back to full normal right now. Current estimations are 60-70k deaths from it but the doubling of suicides resulting of lockdowns this year to 100k make us more likely to die from suicide than covid-19.
- camgunz 7y ago
  I think those numbers are way low. Based on demographic numbers: Older than 85: 650k deaths 65-84: 150k 55-65: 400k I don't think everyone will be infected, but lets say it's half. That's 600k. Let's say it's 10%. That's 120k. By any measure, the loss of life is... just breathtaking. But either way, parent was taking about letting everyone get it to build herd immunity, so that's where "everyone gets it" is coming from. https://www.livescience.com/is-coronavirus-deadly.html https://www.livescience.com/is-coronavirus-deadly.html > the doubling of suicides resulting of lockdowns this year to 100k make us more likely to die from suicide than covid-19 This had been circling the internet a little, but I would caution against extrapolating an uptick in suicides into doubling by the end of the year. There are no doubt consequences to sheltering in place, domestic abuse is a concern as well for example. But this is the best we've got.
- kelnos 7y ago
  Do you have citations to back up those numbers? I've been looking for things to read that try to quantify the potential harm of shelter-in-place orders, but haven't found much that go anywhere beyond wild guesses.
  - camgunz 7y ago
    Yeah! Well, not the suicides. The stuff I found was like "9 suicides in Tennessee" (which is tragic but not indicative) and a lot of coverage of Trump's lies about it. But COVID-19 I used: https://www.livescience.com/is-coronavirus-deadly.html https://www.livescience.com/is-coronavirus-deadly.html and https://www.statista.com/statistics/241488/population-of-the-us-by-sex-and-age/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/241488/population-of-the... Feel free to check my math, it's late and I did some pretty sketchy rounding.
- DanBC 7y ago
  > the doubling of suicides resulting of lockdowns this year to 100k There's no evidence that suicides are doubling.
tdfx 7y ago
> We'll figure the rest out later. When? As far as I know, no one has provided any quantifiable goal post for when it’s safe to stop lockdown.
- camgunz 7y ago
  When we have a plan that doesn't involve the likely death of thousands of people. I get it's frustrating to not have a timeline and that the stakes are high. But as shitty as it's gonna sound, life's not fair. But in terms of metric, people are actually talking about what stats to look at, mainly the reproduction rate (Cuomo refers to it as infection rate in his watch the dial slide) vs. hospital capacity. Angela Merkel went on at some length about it. But it'll take time, and to avoid new waves, we need testing, and I haven't heard anything about US plans for that, which honestly scares me.
  - TheOtherDave 7y ago
    There's been some testing. It generally shows that _way_ more people have (or had) COVID-19 than we thought, and that most of the cases are so mild that people never even knew they were sick. NYC Hospitals find that 15% of pregnant women have COVID-19: https://www.forbes.com/sites/williamhaseltine/2020/04/20/new-study-suggests-that-were-underestimating-covid-19-cases-by-the-millions https://www.forbes.com/sites/williamhaseltine/2020/04/20/new... That particular article doesn't mention it, but other reports I've heard of said only about 1 in 8 of that 15% were symptomatic. In Chelsea, MA, 30% of 200 random people tested positive, 1/2 reported no symptoms at all: https://www.bostonglobe.com/2020/04/17/business/nearly-third-200-blood-samples-taken-chelsea-show-exposure-coronavirus/ https://www.bostonglobe.com/2020/04/17/business/nearly-third... Here's a general article pointing out that this is very likely to not be as big of a deal as we thought it'd be: https://www.nbcnews.com/health/health-news/how-many-people-have-had-coronavirus-no-symptoms-n1187681 https://www.nbcnews.com/health/health-news/how-many-people-h...
    - vkou 7y ago
      All that the antibody studies have shown is that antibody studies grossly overestimate the number of people that have COVID-19. If the studies are accurate, only 1/600 affected people die... Which means that every single man, woman, and child in NYC has already been infected, and that the death rate will drop to zero tomorrow. I find that rather difficult to believe.
shadowprofile77 7y ago
Oh please get over yourself with the absurdly dramatic hyperbole. The deadliest thing most of us will ever have a chance of coming into contact with? you can't even get your numbers right with the drama. At 0.5% mortality and the unlikely case of 100% infection of the whole U.S population, it certainly wouldn't amount to millions and millions of dead. Sure, it can in exceptionally rare, outlier cases kill anyone, just as do many infectious diseases whose presence we live with daily without shutting down economies and possibly causing hundreds of thousands of indirect deaths.. Gigantic, overly broad population-affecting policies of a particular and known destructive nature should not be based off such highly uncommon outliers. These things are more than a bit too important to just be figured out later as you casually say. By far and away, it kills the elderly and even among them (again, these are the actual numbers from the vast majority of major infection sites and countries) the vast majorities of those elderly deaths are among people over the age of 70-75. Check the numbers for yourself from any country you care to name that has published them and has enough fatalities for a more complete picture of their demographic profile. These people must be protected, of course but given the literal cross-demographic human costs of the most extreme economic measures and shelter in place rules that many still propose, a serious acceptance of discussing alternative measures for protecting the elderly while still saving the economy should absolutely be welcomed. This kind of panicked terrified posting that disregards a wealth of contradictory and differing evidence is not at all helpful to any reasonable discussion. Furthermore, what are you yourself engaging in if not your own armchair epidemiology? It's as if a certain large subset masturbatory hypochondriac hive mind of commentators at Hacker news is so emotionally attached to its own panicky speculation from a month or two ago when much less evidence of lower mortality rates and high asymptomatic infection was available, that some of you simply can't abide mor optimistic divergent points of view even now despite steadily growing evidence to the contrary of previously higher expected mortality rates. Even if we accept that this virus is indeed deadly for certain vulnerable populations (a thing virtually nobody denies) and that more drastic social distancing measures are still extremely important for a while yet, then at least allowing calm debate on real human consequences of economic destruction, and debate of different policies for dealing with these consequences should always be welcomed without emotional overload.
DanBC 7y ago
Can I check what you think gloves will achieve?
- camgunz 7y ago
  Yeah! A major way people spread things is through their hands, so wearing gloves and taking them off before you get home helps you not bring it inside. You can then remove your mask and wash your hands.

hartator 7y ago

That’s actually not true. We are talking 0.2-0.3% lethality which is still a lot but it will bellow 250k deaths even if we are back to full normal right now. Current estimations are 60-70k deaths from it but the doubling of suicides resulting of lockdowns this year to 100k make us more likely to die from suicide than covid-19.

camgunz 7y ago
I think those numbers are way low. Based on demographic numbers: Older than 85: 650k deaths 65-84: 150k 55-65: 400k I don't think everyone will be infected, but lets say it's half. That's 600k. Let's say it's 10%. That's 120k. By any measure, the loss of life is... just breathtaking. But either way, parent was taking about letting everyone get it to build herd immunity, so that's where "everyone gets it" is coming from. https://www.livescience.com/is-coronavirus-deadly.html https://www.livescience.com/is-coronavirus-deadly.html > the doubling of suicides resulting of lockdowns this year to 100k make us more likely to die from suicide than covid-19 This had been circling the internet a little, but I would caution against extrapolating an uptick in suicides into doubling by the end of the year. There are no doubt consequences to sheltering in place, domestic abuse is a concern as well for example. But this is the best we've got.
kelnos 7y ago
Do you have citations to back up those numbers? I've been looking for things to read that try to quantify the potential harm of shelter-in-place orders, but haven't found much that go anywhere beyond wild guesses.
- camgunz 7y ago
  Yeah! Well, not the suicides. The stuff I found was like "9 suicides in Tennessee" (which is tragic but not indicative) and a lot of coverage of Trump's lies about it. But COVID-19 I used: https://www.livescience.com/is-coronavirus-deadly.html https://www.livescience.com/is-coronavirus-deadly.html and https://www.statista.com/statistics/241488/population-of-the-us-by-sex-and-age/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/241488/population-of-the... Feel free to check my math, it's late and I did some pretty sketchy rounding.
DanBC 7y ago
> the doubling of suicides resulting of lockdowns this year to 100k There's no evidence that suicides are doubling.

tdfx 7y ago

> We'll figure the rest out later. When? As far as I know, no one has provided any quantifiable goal post for when it’s safe to stop lockdown.

camgunz 7y ago
When we have a plan that doesn't involve the likely death of thousands of people. I get it's frustrating to not have a timeline and that the stakes are high. But as shitty as it's gonna sound, life's not fair. But in terms of metric, people are actually talking about what stats to look at, mainly the reproduction rate (Cuomo refers to it as infection rate in his watch the dial slide) vs. hospital capacity. Angela Merkel went on at some length about it. But it'll take time, and to avoid new waves, we need testing, and I haven't heard anything about US plans for that, which honestly scares me.
- TheOtherDave 7y ago
  There's been some testing. It generally shows that _way_ more people have (or had) COVID-19 than we thought, and that most of the cases are so mild that people never even knew they were sick. NYC Hospitals find that 15% of pregnant women have COVID-19: https://www.forbes.com/sites/williamhaseltine/2020/04/20/new-study-suggests-that-were-underestimating-covid-19-cases-by-the-millions https://www.forbes.com/sites/williamhaseltine/2020/04/20/new... That particular article doesn't mention it, but other reports I've heard of said only about 1 in 8 of that 15% were symptomatic. In Chelsea, MA, 30% of 200 random people tested positive, 1/2 reported no symptoms at all: https://www.bostonglobe.com/2020/04/17/business/nearly-third-200-blood-samples-taken-chelsea-show-exposure-coronavirus/ https://www.bostonglobe.com/2020/04/17/business/nearly-third... Here's a general article pointing out that this is very likely to not be as big of a deal as we thought it'd be: https://www.nbcnews.com/health/health-news/how-many-people-have-had-coronavirus-no-symptoms-n1187681 https://www.nbcnews.com/health/health-news/how-many-people-h...
  - vkou 7y ago
    All that the antibody studies have shown is that antibody studies grossly overestimate the number of people that have COVID-19. If the studies are accurate, only 1/600 affected people die... Which means that every single man, woman, and child in NYC has already been infected, and that the death rate will drop to zero tomorrow. I find that rather difficult to believe.

shadowprofile77 7y ago

Oh please get over yourself with the absurdly dramatic hyperbole. The deadliest thing most of us will ever have a chance of coming into contact with? you can't even get your numbers right with the drama. At 0.5% mortality and the unlikely case of 100% infection of the whole U.S population, it certainly wouldn't amount to millions and millions of dead. Sure, it can in exceptionally rare, outlier cases kill anyone, just as do many infectious diseases whose presence we live with daily without shutting down economies and possibly causing hundreds of thousands of indirect deaths.. Gigantic, overly broad population-affecting policies of a particular and known destructive nature should not be based off such highly uncommon outliers. These things are more than a bit too important to just be figured out later as you casually say. By far and away, it kills the elderly and even among them (again, these are the actual numbers from the vast majority of major infection sites and countries) the vast majorities of those elderly deaths are among people over the age of 70-75. Check the numbers for yourself from any country you care to name that has published them and has enough fatalities for a more complete picture of their demographic profile. These people must be protected, of course but given the literal cross-demographic human costs of the most extreme economic measures and shelter in place rules that many still propose, a serious acceptance of discussing alternative measures for protecting the elderly while still saving the economy should absolutely be welcomed. This kind of panicked terrified posting that disregards a wealth of contradictory and differing evidence is not at all helpful to any reasonable discussion. Furthermore, what are you yourself engaging in if not your own armchair epidemiology? It's as if a certain large subset masturbatory hypochondriac hive mind of commentators at Hacker news is so emotionally attached to its own panicky speculation from a month or two ago when much less evidence of lower mortality rates and high asymptomatic infection was available, that some of you simply can't abide mor optimistic divergent points of view even now despite steadily growing evidence to the contrary of previously higher expected mortality rates. Even if we accept that this virus is indeed deadly for certain vulnerable populations (a thing virtually nobody denies) and that more drastic social distancing measures are still extremely important for a while yet, then at least allowing calm debate on real human consequences of economic destruction, and debate of different policies for dealing with these consequences should always be welcomed without emotional overload.

DanBC 7y ago

Can I check what you think gloves will achieve?

camgunz 7y ago
Yeah! A major way people spread things is through their hands, so wearing gloves and taking them off before you get home helps you not bring it inside. You can then remove your mask and wash your hands.