6 ms·
Medical research director sees light at the end of the Covid-19 tunnel
- mrfusion 6y agoPandemics end when people end them, not when the disease ends.
- bumby 6y agoDo you mean that pandemics don’t really end, but only get reclassified? Or do you mean they end when we cure ourselves through vaccines, herd immunity etc.?
- SpicyLemonZest 6y agoThese kind of highly communicable respiratory pandemics only get reclassified. What we call "flu season", for example, is just the continuing spread of past flu pandemics. Most health officials expect that this will be the long term trajectory for the coronavirus, even with vaccines and herd immunity.
- Retric 6y agoSome years we still have flu pandemics. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1957–1958_influenza_pandemic https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1957–1958_influenza_pandemic That’s 1+ million deaths when world population was less than 1/2 what it is today.
- mikem170 6y agoAnd the 1968 Hong Kong flu, which killed 1-4 million people, world population half of what it is today. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1968_flu_pandemic https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1968_flu_pandemic
- beamatronic 6y agoOr we can just wear masks in public forever. Wouldn’t that squash it? Every flu?
- simonebrunozzi 6y agoLet's all concentrate and make it end today, then!! I'm relieved the solution is so simple. </sarcasm>
- slg 6y ago>We now see this multi-system, inflammatory condition can be fatal for kids, who average 8 years old. Almost 2 percent of the kids diagnosed with COVID-19 in the United States have died from it, and the majority of them wind up in an ICU in a hospital. Schools are open in much of this country.
- mrfusion 6y agoIt’s a typo or plain old lie. Here’s some data: https://www.acsh.org/news/2020/06/23/coronavirus-covid-deaths-us-age-race-14863 https://www.acsh.org/news/2020/06/23/coronavirus-covid-death...
- whiddershins 6y agoI would question this statistic, could even be a typo?
- progers7 6y ago"Almost 2 percent of the kids diagnosed with COVID-19 in the United States have died from it, and the majority of them wind up in an ICU in a hospital." Is this a typo? Possibly he meant 0.2%? The data from my county (Alameda) has 1,450 cases <18 and 0 deaths: https://covid-19.acgov.org/data.page https://covid-19.acgov.org/data.page Similarly, data from South Korea, Spain, and Italy, and China is <= 0.2%: https://ourworldindata.org/mortality-risk-covid#case-fatality-rate-of-covid-19-by-age https://ourworldindata.org/mortality-risk-covid#case-fatalit...
- mrfusion 6y agoSadly the typo will never be corrected.
- jointpdf 6y agoThat stood out to me as well. I think it meant to say: 2% of children who were diagnosed with the multisystem inflammatory syndrome (MIS-C) died from it. > 80% of the children who developed the condition required intensive care, 20% required mechanical ventilation, and four children, or 2%, died. [https://www.statnews.com/2020/06/29/nejm-inflammation-children-covid19-misc/ https://www.statnews.com/2020/06/29/nejm-inflammation-childr...]
- georgecmu 6y agoAnd this interpretation is consistent with the following statistic: As of August 6, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has received reports of 570 confirmed cases of MIS-C and 10 deaths. https://www.salon.com/2020/08/13/we-asked-scientists-about-the-safety-of-russias-rushed-coronavirus-vaccine/#:~:text=As%20of%20August%206,%20the%20Centers%20for%20Disease%20Control%20and%20Prevention%20(CDC)%20has%20received%20reports%20of%20570%20confirmed%20cases%20of%20MIS-C%20and%2010%20deaths https://www.salon.com/2020/08/13/we-asked-scientists-about-t....
- tathougies 6y agoAccording to BUsiness insider, Flu is more dangerous for children than COVID: https://www.businessinsider.com/coronavirus-compared-seasonal-flu-in-the-us-death-rates-2020-3 https://www.businessinsider.com/coronavirus-compared-seasona... COVID is about 5 times more dangerous for 20 - mid forty year olds, but still quite low, in terms of mortality. Honestly, I'd bet flu would be more dangerous among the older were it not for vaccines.
- gns24 6y agoIn the medium-term the most promising thing out there is better, faster, easier testing. There are a number of organisations developing saliva-based tests that can return results in around an hour for a few dollars a test. Being able to test everyone on a regular basis may well be enough to keep the disease under control without major impact on our lives. There are significant resources going into scaling up new testing technologies, but it's definitely not getting the support that vaccine development is, and maybe it should.
- underdeserver 6y agoWhy the hell does the URL have "love--sex" in it?
- jffry 6y agoFrom a little link in the right sidebar, it appears this article is part of Nautilus issue #88, titled "Love & Sex": http://nautil.us/issue/88/love--sex http://nautil.us/issue/88/love--sex
- astrocat 6y ago"Love & Sex" is the title of issue 88, the current issue of the print/online magazine in which this article appears.
- nico_h 6y agoThe other thing that stood out to me is this "The incidence of it is anywhere from 10 to 80 percent, even in young people who recover from a mild attack of COVID-19" about "Long COVID". That seems very high.
- maxekman 6y agoI was surprised to notice that Nautilus does not use HTTPS. I wonder what the thinking (or lack of) behind that is?