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Wow with these comments. You going to the gym is not saving the economy. Yes, we can't shut everything down but you'd think the article was about shutting down

Wow with these comments. You going to the gym is not saving the economy. Yes, we can't shut everything down but you'd think the article was about shutting down grocery stores or the stock market. And by not doing your part, your whole community could be stunted for 2 years. Also congratulations for not caring about a 1 in 200 chance of death (pretty high by the way) because you're healthy and passing on the risk to some vulnerable person (probably your parents or a school teacher) with a 1 in 10 chance of death. You might be helping your personal economy, but you're not helping "the economy". - give up a few luxuries especially if they involve heavy breathing or eating in close quarters. - Work from home if you can - Socially distance - Wear a mask when you can't socially distance - Go to work if you need to. Don't go to other people's work if you don't need to - Support temporary benefits to your fellow citizens as you helpfully avoid going to their place of work.

Y-Bopinator 6y ago
Wrong wrong wrong. Wrong.
thewarrior 6y ago
A German study found that even asymptomatic COVID patients have inflammation and damage to heart tissue that’s more than what you’d expect to see. We don’t know whether this will heal or affect the heart long term. People only looking at fatality rates and so on are taking unknown risks. Many people who have healed from COVID including younger people cannot even climb a flight of stairs. People suffer from fatigue and brain fog months later. Many need lung and kidney transplants. This is not a flu. It causes heavy clotting of the blood and organ damage all over the body which the flu doesn’t. I urge people to do more research before taking such risks.
- seebetter 6y ago
  We really need to define "many people". I try to avoid comments and papers like you referenced. They essentially represent the worst case scenario -- it's in the air, unkillable, easy to catch, victims never recover, you may have no symptoms but permanent damage, it makes sane people go crazy etc etc. How about -- what's the max viral load one can sustain for it not to pass the 1st layer immune system? Is there really a 1st and 2nd layer? Can I resist it without getting antibodies? How much more effective is a KN95 / N95 mask in terms of viral load vs the others? And why don't we have more high powered venting fans and permanent outside events and require building to open their windows or remove their walls in climates where that'd work?
  - thewarrior 6y ago
    I don’t have a clear number for many. But the hospitalization rate is 1-2 %. And if we assume that half of them have long term symptoms thats around 1 %. You can do one thing to reduce your viral load. Wear a mask. N95 will do better than a surgical mask. But even mask wearing seems controversial. These things are really hard to study so you need to err on the side of caution.
    - xkbarkar 6y ago
      Keep in mind that the current being on the safe side cautions have devastating effects on the vulnerable populations outside of the comfort of US and EU homes. "6,000 children could die every day as a direct consequence of the pandemic, that’s one child every 15 seconds, if we don’t act now." https://www.unicef.ie/stories/impact-covid-19-children/ https://www.unicef.ie/stories/impact-covid-19-children/
      - thewarrior 6y ago
        Not locking down in the US will not save the lives of children in Yemen
        bpodgursky 6y ago
        This isn't true. The US threw away vast amount of food because of supply chain disruption, and a lot of raw production was interrupted. The US is a massive food exporter. If the price of soybean, or wheat, or pork goes up 15% internationally as a result of US supply disruptions, that doesn't starve any Americans, but it absolutely causes deaths in Yemen, which is already in the middle of a famine.
        nuclearnice1 6y ago
        You’ll be happy to know that soybean and swine prices are at 10 year lows and wheat is up slightly but lower than a year ago. [1,2,3] I think your concern is real and well placed. When the economy is frozen for a pandemic, you have a demand shock and a supply shock, what happens to prices? I think this was genuinely unclear early in the pandemic. Interesting additional details here [4,5] [1] https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/PSOYBUSDQ https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/PSOYBUSDQ [2] https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/PPORKUSDM https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/PPORKUSDM [3] https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/PWHEAMTUSDQ https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/PWHEAMTUSDQ [4] https://www.bloomberg.com/amp/opinion/articles/2020-05-27/paul-krugman-is-pretty-upbeat-about-coronavirus-economic-recovery https://www.bloomberg.com/amp/opinion/articles/2020-05-27/pa... [5] https://mobile.twitter.com/paulkrugman/status/1241689422090944513?lang=en https://mobile.twitter.com/paulkrugman/status/12416894220909...
- csnover 6y ago
  > A German study found that even asymptomatic COVID patients have inflammation and damage to heart tissue that’s more than what you’d expect to see. We don’t know whether this will heal or affect the heart long term. Are you referring to this study[0] and possibly this article[1]? (In my experience, telling people to “do research” instead of giving them links to primary sources isn’t great if you want to educate people or have a high quality discussion.) [0] https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamacardiology/fullarticle/2768916 https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamacardiology/fullarticle/... [1] https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2020/08/long-haulers-covid-19-recognition-support-groups-symptoms/615382/ https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2020/08/long-haul...
- volkk 6y ago
  this is unnecessary fear mongering without any actual statistics/studies linked. i've seen those studies linked, and they're definitely concerning, but using words like "many" without any backing is just harmful and just creates more paranoia/panic. highly recommend /r/COVID19 (stay away from /r/coronavirus) for well moderated discussions that aren't politicized/sensationalist and are based on research/science/numbers.
  - thewarrior 6y ago
    Yes because we don’t know yet. Doesn’t mean it’s fearmongering. SARS patients had side effects for 5-10 years.
    - volkk 6y ago
      SARS has had 15+ years to be studied at this point. COVID has been around for half a year. Nobody knows anything so talking about it one way or another is dangerous. Too optimistic and you have people thinking its no big deal, and if youre too end of the world about it, then you've got everybody cowering in fear and anxiety about something that has an extremely low chance of happening to them.
      - apendleton 6y ago
        Many people doubtless aren't even aware of the possibility of outcomes other than death or recovery, and not discussing the possibility of other outcomes tacitly supports their continued misunderstanding. You seem to be saying "we don't know for sure, so we should stay neutral and not talk imply an outcome either way," but saying nothing is not neutral.
        volkk 6y ago
        I see your point, and you're not wrong. I guess my main gripe with OP was the way they wrote it. It just screams language used to incite fear amongst uncertainty.
    - dasudasu 6y ago
- hardwaregeek 6y ago
  I wish we started a campaign of "you don't have to die for it to suck". I don't know why we're stuck in the dichotomy of death or survival. Permanent damage isn't great either.
  - VectorLock 6y ago
    There was an article about a quite healthy looking PCA in his 30s who was intubated and essentially wasted away to a startling degree during his COVID convalescence that really drove that home for me.
  - alicemaz 6y ago
    same reason it's hard to steer an ocean liner. death rates dominated the way people thought and talked about this for months. now it's clearer death rates are obviously not so bad, but permanent damage and months-long recoveries and unclear immunity profile are massive unknowns, but the inertia of the previous narrative still overwhelms the minority trying to course correct. "we're all going to die" "no we're going to be fine" is much easier to latch onto than "it's more complicated than that and we don't really know." especially since most people got sick of lockdown and many are in grave economic danger because of it. people are doing a mental calculus of "well I'll probably be fine so I think we should open back up" and change their arguments to suit the conclusion they've decided on
opportune 6y ago
I’m part of some online fitness communities and it’s insane the rationalizations people will use to go back to the gym. I have even heard of people driving 3hrs+ or staying overnight to go to out of state gyms with less restrictions. Which is actually very terrible on a macro level. That said I do think it’s possible for gyms to adapt to be covid-safe by moving equipment outside, restricting the max number of people allowed in the exercise area, mandating masks and social distancing, and wiping down every piece of equipment after it’s used. I have seen some gyms doing that in San Jose. But I guess most gyms don’t want to do that even though gyms outside of dense urban area typically have pretty big parking lots they might be able to use with some open-air huts
- alicemaz 6y ago
  yea my gyms here (texas) have been really good about this, either mandatory masks or open air, mandatory distancing, wipe everything down (my muay thai gym got like a metal exterminators tank for disinfectant they just spray everything with), etc etc. the article makes the point well, that if you close everything down, people will just do it anyway, so it's better to just have it in the open and under control and punish bad actors when they crop up local gyms (as opposed to chain/bigbox) tend to be extremely tight-knit communities, which means people want to keep each other safe and will go out of their way to do it, within reason. most people don't care about everyone in their city in abstract, but they do care about members of groups they derive camaraderie from. hell of a lot safer than reopening restaurants, imo
xkbarkar 6y ago
I think I read this exact comment from my aunt on fb yesterday. She said 3 in 100 though.
showdeadtest 6y ago
I think more and more people are tired of having their jobs, educations, and social activities toyed with like they are trivial things.
- kimmeld 6y ago
  Social activities are most certainly trivial when compared to a pandemic. Right now my kid’s school is starting remote only primarily because teenagers and early 20’s somethings couldn’t stop going to parties over the summer. Actions have consequences.
  - m0zg 6y ago
    And we'll all be paying for reduced quality of education of these kids for the rest of our lives. In my son's school, the only requirement to get an "A" last semester was to turn in _any homework at all_, doesn't matter if it's complete or correct - nobody checked. There are now a lot of "A" students.
  - showdeadtest 6y ago
    I think we see the consequences of a plan that is idealistic and unrealistic. I don’t believe any amount of moral handwringing and shouting is going to make it work.
    - deleted 6y ago
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    - deleted 6y ago
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  - duud 6y ago
    What about when social isolation is linked to suicide? https://www.amhf.org.au/social_isolation_increases_male_suicide_risk_says_amhf https://www.amhf.org.au/social_isolation_increases_male_suic...
- roughly 6y ago
mehrdadn 6y ago
> 1 in 200 chance of death (pretty high by the way) The fatality rate of a car crash is also about 0.5% [1], but that doesn't prevent us from driving. That means there's a piece of the puzzle missing here, right? Note that I'm not concluding this means we should go to gyms (or whatever). I'm just pointing out your analysis is missing an important factor, making it faulty/unconvincing. Edit: Changed the statistic source, because it wasn't measuring what I thought it was measuring. (Which incidentally also gets at the same distinction I was trying to make in my comment.) [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motor_vehicle_fatality_rate_in_U.S._by_year https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motor_vehicle_fatality_rate_in...
- diabeetusman 6y ago
  That's over your entire lifetime, not a few weeks after getting infected. You don't have a 1% chance of dying in a car accident every time you drive.
  - mehrdadn 6y ago
    You're right, but unfortunately it's beside my point. (I took "chances of dying in a car crash" to mean it was the fatality rate of a car crash, which was wrong.) I was trying to find the chances of dying given you have a car crash, not the chances of being in a car crash and dying. (Which I guess leads to the spoiler: this was the distinction I was trying to make. That you can't just draw a conclusion from only looking at the former, which is what that 1% figure is. You need to look at the chances of getting the disease as well.) I updated the quoted source.
    - dmurray 6y ago
      > I was trying to find the chances of dying given you have a car crash, not the chances of being in a car crash and dying. That seems a weird statistic to seek out, because your conclusion would then be "...and we don't try to avoid getting in car crashes to avoid that 0.5% risk of death". Which is wrong, we do and we should try to avoid crashes.
crisdux 6y ago
This post is precisely the issue. The risk for everyone is not 1 in 200. That's what makes this complicated. I'm really struggling with this. How can we reverse all the fear that has damaged our society and given people a sense that they need to exaggerate the danger? Folks don't have capacity for risk analysis or understanding basic statistics, even on a message board like hacker news.
randomchars 6y ago
The question I've never found a reasonably answer for is this: Whats the exit strategy? What has to happen for this to end? For what I've read there's a good chance this virus will stay with us for the long term, just like the flu. Waiting for the vaccine is kind of like hoping for a miracle, as it might not even work. So when will all this madness end?
- Spearchucker 6y ago
  Right now there is no exist strategy. There are possibilities though. Assuming a vaccine doesn't appear, then we're left with herd immunity through community infection. There are problems with that though, because it's not yet clear whether infection with the COVID-19 virus even makes a person immune to future infection. Amidst all the uncertianty a vaccine is our best hope. Personally I'm assuming this will be with us in some shape or form for many years.
  - randomchars 6y ago
    > it's not yet clear whether infection with the COVID-19 virus even makes a person immune to future infection. If you don't become immune after getting the virus, how would you become so after vaccination? My understanding is that vaccines have a weaker version or a portion of the virus inside them, and your body needs to make antibodies. But if that doesn't happen?
    - Spearchucker 6y ago
      Exactly.
- lkbm 6y ago
  I don't think vaccines are a miracle. They're not certain, but that doesn't make them miracles. The exit strategy should be to enough of a lock-down to get rates very low. This would likely have to be combined with quick-turnaround testing and contact tracing. The US largely failed with this. Other countries show what an exit strategy could have looked like. I'm not sure if it's still viable, but maybe. This is what I wanted a lock-down to bring us, and what maybe still could: * Access to testing: This has improved a lot. In March and April, I knew people with symptoms who couldn't get tested. Last month, my partner found it easy to get tested. * Quick-turn-around with testing: This still sucks. My partner's test in July was easy to get, but the earliest appointment was five days out and it was another five to get the results. This isn't good enough. * Contact tracing: We still don't have this, at least in most places. I would love to install a contact tracing app on my phone, but there isn't one. Seems they're regional, and Texas/Austin hasn't bothered? * A reduction in growth-rates due to social distancing: We got this! Daily growth rate dropped from 1.3+ in mid-March to 1.06-1.08 in mid-April. (I haven't looked recently, but I don't think this has lasted. Still, we were on track to hit 100k deaths by mid-April without this effect.) * New information about how to prevent it: We got some important new information! Turns out surfaces aren't a big deal, and masks are. This is the opposite of what we were told early on, and knowing to wear masks (and more recently, not to use gaiters as masks) is a Big Deal. * Improved treatments: Only thing I've seen is the "proning helps" thing a few months back. * Vaccines: We've made a lot of progress. More than I think experts expected by now. So, yeah, we currently seem to have no real exit strategy other than waiting for a vaccine, or for herd immunity. That doesn't mean it's rational to just exit without a strategy. For now, I'm just going to stay mostly locked down until the vaccine happens or our government decides to step it up and do enough of the things listed above to get the spread under control. Not everyone can do this -- as another commenter mentioned, things that aren't urgent the first week will become so after a month, or six months, and these things are different for different people. But as much as I liked going to the gym, I'm going to continue to forgo that.
drevil-v2 6y ago
Well the lockdowns were intended to "flatten the curve" in the short term not impose China style draconian limits on personal movement until there is a vaccine 18 months later.
seizethecheese 6y ago
> congratulations for not caring about a 1 in 200 chance of death (pretty high by the way) because you're healthy and passing on the risk to some vulnerable person (probably your parents or a school teacher) with a 1 in 10 chance of death. This is wrong and misleading. You're quoting the average fatality rate for "healthy" people, but the distribution doesn't look like that at all. Then, you cherrypick 10% out of nowhere for "parents and school teachers". 10% is the rate for people in their 80s. Real data: "[t]he estimated IFR is close to zero for younger adults but rises exponentially with age, reaching about 0.3% for ages 50-59, 1.3% for ages 60-69, 4% for ages 70-79, 10% for ages 80-89."[1] [1] https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.07.23.20160895v3 https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.07.23.20160895v...
- dangc 6y ago
  thank you! I really appreciate the effort you put in to clear up the misinformation
- WD-42 6y ago
  That’s still whole numbers for anyone over 60, and significant numbers still for anyone below it. Have you ever seriously contemplated death? If you have, those numbers don’t seem very good, not at all. Not to mention these are stats for DEATH. Meaning these are the worst case scenario. Dead. The chances of getting seriously ill, like major suffering, are much higher. Would you want to experience that? Would you wish that on others in your community? Suck it up and do some pushups for gods sake.
  - seizethecheese 6y ago
    Yes, I've contemplated death. Have you? Here are the chances of dying in a year, for a given age, from actuarial tables: 25 year olds: 0.16% chance of dying 35 year olds: 0.2% chance of dying 45 year olds: 0.3% chance of dying 55 year olds: 0.7% chance of dying 65 year olds: 2% chance of dying 75 year olds: 3.5% 85 year olds: 10% 95 year olds: 26% https://www.ssa.gov/oact/STATS/table4c6.html https://www.ssa.gov/oact/STATS/table4c6.html
arxv33 6y ago
I travelled all over Europe past two months and I must say Europe is quite laxed. And there cases haven’t really gone up. Pretty much every outdoor cafes in Europe were open with a few exceptions and I didn’t see much difference other than people wearing masks and social distancing between tables. I think in US everything is polarized and politicized. To the point that wearing masks is somehow considered against freedom. I believe health officials have some blames to share. They still have not come clean for their initial mask guidelines that was blatantly wrong. I think health authorities will have long time to regain trusts in US. I also feel we don’t quite understand the transmission mechanism fully yet. It’s airborne, at least we know that part but the clusters in nursing homes and indoor parties also indicate there is some mechanisms in play when indoor.
- divbzero 6y ago
  Europe can be lax now precisely because it was strict early enough and long enough to bring prevalence down to a safer level.
  - rootusrootus 6y ago
    I think that is a mistake. Exponential math doesn't fail to work just because you delay it for a while. Everyone started with just one case.
    - deleted 6y ago
      [deleted]
    - FabHK 6y ago
      That is true. One cannot completely relax. The point is that Asia and Europe has by and large managed, after the big initial outbreaks, to keep R in check with moderate, yet consistent measures (social distancing, no large events, masks). When people get careless, it flares up, but can (thanks to decent testing meanwhile) typically be suppressed again with regional lockdowns before it gets really bad.
- gvjddbnvdrbv 6y ago
perlbeatdong 6y ago
You are claiming that parents and teachers have a 10% chance of death? Sorry, but this is not true according to every statistic so far. parents of a child living at home are not old. Teachers (people in the workforce) are not old. You're off by a factor of about 100. Stop spreading propaganda.
helaoban 6y ago
Spoken like somebody with no skin in the game. Go preach this nonsense to small business owners that have had their livelihoods taken from them and see how long you can keep your head above the parapet. > Support temporary benefits to your fellow citizens. What benefits? Support how? Prayers? Support that small business in your community with your wallet. > Also congratulations for not caring about a 1 in 200 chance of death. Where's the data to back up any close to an assertion like this? You betray an inane non-appreciation of what is actually happening to people economically. Go out and spend your money, support local businesses. Edit: To address the claim about the 1/200 rate directly, that number is based on bogus 0.5 - 1% global IFR estimates that haven't been controlled for any demographic group. The IFR for people under 70 is less than 0.1, and likely much, much lower for under 40. And that's not even controlling for anything except age.[1] 1. https://www.folkhalsomyndigheten.se/contentassets/53c0dc391be54f5d959ead9131edb771/infection-fatality-rate-covid-19-stockholm-technical-report.pdf https://www.folkhalsomyndigheten.se/contentassets/53c0dc391b...
- rocha 6y ago
  > Also congratulations for not caring about a 1 in 200 chance of death. >> Where's the data to back up any close to an assertion like this? Latest IFR estimates are between 0.5% and 1.0% (1 in 200 to 1 in 100). https://www.who.int/news-room/commentaries/detail/estimating-mortality-from-covid-19 https://www.who.int/news-room/commentaries/detail/estimating...
  - kmm 6y ago
    That's averaged over all ages. For people under 50, it's basically nil, on the order of 1 in 10,000. https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.07.23.20160895v3.full.pdf+html https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.07.23.20160895v...
    - rocha 6y ago
      You are correct. Thanks for pointing it out. Your reference is very good. It is still a pre-print, but the breakdown is very informative. It estimates the IFR (Table 4) for ages between 0-34 as 0.01% (1 in 10,000), increasing exponentially from there. The estimated IFR for the next age group, people between 34-54, is between 0.04% and 0.2% (1 in 2,500 to 1 in 500), one to two orders of magnitude greater. For people over 85, the IFR is 36.8% (~1 in 3). Note that the population over 34 is about 50% of the total in the US.
syshum 6y ago
>>Yes, we can't shut everything down but you'd think the article was about shutting down grocery stores Ahh the old "essential business" justification. Every business is essential to the owners, employees and even customers that depend on those businesses. I do not believe it is the proper role of government to tell people what is and is not "essential" to them. This is with out getting it into the corrupt policies many local government employed where by some businesses where allowed to operate due to political reasons, but other similar businesses were forced to close again for political reasons. Then there was completely illogical enforcement where small retail businesses where forced to close even when they were doing Online Only sales and the only person in the store was the owner.[2] Mike Rowe is correct: all workers are essential.[1] [1] https://fee.org/articles/mike-rowe-is-right-there-s-no-such-thing-as-a-non-essential-worker/ https://fee.org/articles/mike-rowe-is-right-there-s-no-such-... [2] http://newjersey.news12.com/story/42155935/police-interrupt-business-owner-as-she-was-selling-items-on-facebook-live http://newjersey.news12.com/story/42155935/police-interrupt-...
Press2forEN 6y ago
Consider it getting into "good trouble."
csomar 6y ago
How is this different from the TSA for protecting you from terrorists? Or how is this different from the Internet and freedom of speech censorship for protecting you from child porn. Reality Check: It's not different. People should stop from thinking they have a higher moral ground. Nobody does. On the other hand, on a free society, you should not be able to strip people from their freedom, regardless. People should be able to decide if they want to die from Coronavirus or live a semi-paralyzed life in fear. If you are that concerned, then you can confine yourself at home until everything is over. Also humanity and evolution has a coping mechanism called natural selection. Helping people through medicine is a good idea but I think we are stretching it too much. In a few hundreds year, everyone will be walking on earth on a space suit.
- Rapzid 6y ago
  I'm super glad we don't live in that lawless society TBH! One of the best features of government is, IMHO, that we can use it to all agree to abide by having certain "freedoms" inhibited for the greater good where we otherwise wouldn't be able to. Rule of law was a fantastic invention..
- Uehreka 6y ago
  > Also humanity and evolution has a coping mechanism called natural selection. So the phrase "Survival of the Fittest" refers in the abstract to the idea that, given fitness function F, members of a species who pass fitness function F will out-survive members who fail function F and then reproduce in higher numbers. But natural selection itself does not define any fitness functions, and makes no mention of a "universal fitness quality" that can be used to judge the fitness of an individual. The fitness functions that nature comes up with are pretty arbitrary, and don't necessarily align with cultural ideas about merit, fitness or attractiveness. A disease that weakens bones could kill more tall people than short people, a disorder that exploits muscle tissue might affect people who work out more, and a respiratory disease that spreads through the air could take down more sociable people while allowing introverts who stay inside to survive. The point of modern medicine is that we recognize these many of these fitness functions have no meaning beyond the immediate danger they present. And we can use technology to say "that fitness function is dumb" and remove it from the equation. In doing so, we aren't "unlearning a lesson nature wanted us to learn", we're protecting ourselves from the meaningless and arbitrary rocks that nature occasionally throws at us, and as a result we are increasing human lifespan and quality of life. (And yes, you can quibble about stretching out the suffering of people with terminal cancer, but the millions of children who don't pointlessly die of infant diarrhea each year would probably push back a bit)
ImaCake 6y ago
Yes, the comments here are insane. You might only get something like the flu, but your grandma is going to be killed by this, or at least crippled. Same with your parents! The people commenting here seem very selfish.
achenatx 6y ago
there is also the probability of transmission. People living together in the same home is about a 20% chance of transmission. Casual contact( sitting nearby) is estimated to be about .7% The total probability of hospitalization per contact is prevalence * transmission rate * hospitalization rate so it is probably something like 1% * .7% * 3% per contact. So your probability of getting hospitalized is quite low per contact. I personally have a bike trainer and a power cage at home. The one thing I absolutely miss is brazilian jiu jitsu. I see posts from the various gyms that are basically operating in full.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
nradov 6y ago
Those measures are obviously not sustainable indefinitely. What is the exit criteria?
ekianjo 6y ago
> Also congratulations for not caring about a 1 in 200 chance of death (pretty high by the way) because you're healthy and passing on the risk to some vulnerable person (probably your parents or a school teacher) with a 1 in 10 chance of death Where do you get these numbers from?
- perlbeatdong 6y ago
  he assumed you are 70, and the parents and teachers are 85, in order to spread misinformation and propaganda, to fit a political agenda. his comment was then upvoted to the top. he is off by a factor of over 100. when i stated that, the real information was removed by the moderator. that should tell you something about the people here. this site is the news channel of a vc firm.
stjohnswarts 6y ago
Everyone knows these things by now, why do people keep repeating it? you think the people going to the speakeasy gyms haven't heard it 100 times? The article points out that in general some people will always find a way.
kerabatsos 6y ago
Americans have always been and will always be a “me first” populace.
lobotryas 6y ago
You’re going to write all that when BLM protest and Portland _riots_ are going on? Hundreds or thousands of people close up together breathing hard with or without masks?? Get outta here, you phony.
- crunchybackbone 6y ago
  protests = outdoors. gyms=indoors. calling a protest a riot doesn't put it indoors. gyms, shopping, etc are much more dangerous than being outside at a protest.
gjs278 6y ago
i’m going to go out and volunteer at a nursing home so we can afford the benefits for my fellow citizens. we’re wasting the money on keeping the old people alive.
themeiguoren 6y ago
So what about those young healthy people that interact with no one who’s at risk? I’m in my mid 20’s, and the best upper bound I’ve seen on risk of death for someone my age who is otherwise healthy is 0.05%. Not nothing, but comparable to 2 years of driving and well within the level of risk we give people agency to make decisions about every day. I’ve been through lockdown and I know what that huge hit to quality of life means to me, and the risk of covid is worth it to not have to live that way again. My fear is solely that I pass it to someone at higher risk, and to that end I’m working from home, masking up, and there isn’t a single person in my life over the age of 40. But I’m also not holding back on seeing friends my age, and yes even throwing parties. We’re all in the same boat, and if they’re also out and about then they’ve made the decision that they’re comfortable with that level of risk themselves. I don’t think it’s a crazy one, and so I’m not going to make it for them.
centimeter 6y ago
> not caring about a 1 in 200 chance of death My chance of death is vastly less than that - probably on the order of 1-10% that.
sershe 6y ago
To preface, I disagree on the pandemic damage vs lockdowns damage (other than the economy, projected increase in deaths from heart disease, cancer, increase in suicides and domestic violence and (in the developing world) starvation, malaria, tuberculosis, reported by UN and WHO). I also estimate the risks of COVID to be 10-20x of flu (and I had a relative who died from flu complications - maths is still maths), so I take 20x the precautions compared to what I do for flu in a year when I forget to get the shot... 20x of almost nothing is just a little more than nothing. But that has been discussed above, with much better words and numbers. I only have one unique contribution. A little bonus that made me happy to go outside to closed outdoor areas during stay-home orders, visit (willing) friends at the height of the lockdown, and hit the gyms and restaurants as soon as they opened with work-to-rule mask wearing and distancing, is that it makes unjustifiably sanctimonious people angry.

Y-Bopinator 6y ago

Wrong wrong wrong. Wrong.

thewarrior 6y ago

A German study found that even asymptomatic COVID patients have inflammation and damage to heart tissue that’s more than what you’d expect to see. We don’t know whether this will heal or affect the heart long term. People only looking at fatality rates and so on are taking unknown risks. Many people who have healed from COVID including younger people cannot even climb a flight of stairs. People suffer from fatigue and brain fog months later. Many need lung and kidney transplants. This is not a flu. It causes heavy clotting of the blood and organ damage all over the body which the flu doesn’t. I urge people to do more research before taking such risks.

seebetter 6y ago
We really need to define "many people". I try to avoid comments and papers like you referenced. They essentially represent the worst case scenario -- it's in the air, unkillable, easy to catch, victims never recover, you may have no symptoms but permanent damage, it makes sane people go crazy etc etc. How about -- what's the max viral load one can sustain for it not to pass the 1st layer immune system? Is there really a 1st and 2nd layer? Can I resist it without getting antibodies? How much more effective is a KN95 / N95 mask in terms of viral load vs the others? And why don't we have more high powered venting fans and permanent outside events and require building to open their windows or remove their walls in climates where that'd work?
- thewarrior 6y ago
  I don’t have a clear number for many. But the hospitalization rate is 1-2 %. And if we assume that half of them have long term symptoms thats around 1 %. You can do one thing to reduce your viral load. Wear a mask. N95 will do better than a surgical mask. But even mask wearing seems controversial. These things are really hard to study so you need to err on the side of caution.
  - xkbarkar 6y ago
    Keep in mind that the current being on the safe side cautions have devastating effects on the vulnerable populations outside of the comfort of US and EU homes. "6,000 children could die every day as a direct consequence of the pandemic, that’s one child every 15 seconds, if we don’t act now." https://www.unicef.ie/stories/impact-covid-19-children/ https://www.unicef.ie/stories/impact-covid-19-children/
    - thewarrior 6y ago
      Not locking down in the US will not save the lives of children in Yemen
      - bpodgursky 6y ago
        This isn't true. The US threw away vast amount of food because of supply chain disruption, and a lot of raw production was interrupted. The US is a massive food exporter. If the price of soybean, or wheat, or pork goes up 15% internationally as a result of US supply disruptions, that doesn't starve any Americans, but it absolutely causes deaths in Yemen, which is already in the middle of a famine.
        nuclearnice1 6y ago
        You’ll be happy to know that soybean and swine prices are at 10 year lows and wheat is up slightly but lower than a year ago. [1,2,3] I think your concern is real and well placed. When the economy is frozen for a pandemic, you have a demand shock and a supply shock, what happens to prices? I think this was genuinely unclear early in the pandemic. Interesting additional details here [4,5] [1] https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/PSOYBUSDQ https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/PSOYBUSDQ [2] https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/PPORKUSDM https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/PPORKUSDM [3] https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/PWHEAMTUSDQ https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/PWHEAMTUSDQ [4] https://www.bloomberg.com/amp/opinion/articles/2020-05-27/paul-krugman-is-pretty-upbeat-about-coronavirus-economic-recovery https://www.bloomberg.com/amp/opinion/articles/2020-05-27/pa... [5] https://mobile.twitter.com/paulkrugman/status/1241689422090944513?lang=en https://mobile.twitter.com/paulkrugman/status/12416894220909...
csnover 6y ago
> A German study found that even asymptomatic COVID patients have inflammation and damage to heart tissue that’s more than what you’d expect to see. We don’t know whether this will heal or affect the heart long term. Are you referring to this study[0] and possibly this article[1]? (In my experience, telling people to “do research” instead of giving them links to primary sources isn’t great if you want to educate people or have a high quality discussion.) [0] https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamacardiology/fullarticle/2768916 https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamacardiology/fullarticle/... [1] https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2020/08/long-haulers-covid-19-recognition-support-groups-symptoms/615382/ https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2020/08/long-haul...
volkk 6y ago
this is unnecessary fear mongering without any actual statistics/studies linked. i've seen those studies linked, and they're definitely concerning, but using words like "many" without any backing is just harmful and just creates more paranoia/panic. highly recommend /r/COVID19 (stay away from /r/coronavirus) for well moderated discussions that aren't politicized/sensationalist and are based on research/science/numbers.
- thewarrior 6y ago
  Yes because we don’t know yet. Doesn’t mean it’s fearmongering. SARS patients had side effects for 5-10 years.
  - volkk 6y ago
    SARS has had 15+ years to be studied at this point. COVID has been around for half a year. Nobody knows anything so talking about it one way or another is dangerous. Too optimistic and you have people thinking its no big deal, and if youre too end of the world about it, then you've got everybody cowering in fear and anxiety about something that has an extremely low chance of happening to them.
    - apendleton 6y ago
      Many people doubtless aren't even aware of the possibility of outcomes other than death or recovery, and not discussing the possibility of other outcomes tacitly supports their continued misunderstanding. You seem to be saying "we don't know for sure, so we should stay neutral and not talk imply an outcome either way," but saying nothing is not neutral.
      - volkk 6y ago
        I see your point, and you're not wrong. I guess my main gripe with OP was the way they wrote it. It just screams language used to incite fear amongst uncertainty.
  - dasudasu 6y ago
hardwaregeek 6y ago
I wish we started a campaign of "you don't have to die for it to suck". I don't know why we're stuck in the dichotomy of death or survival. Permanent damage isn't great either.
- VectorLock 6y ago
  There was an article about a quite healthy looking PCA in his 30s who was intubated and essentially wasted away to a startling degree during his COVID convalescence that really drove that home for me.
- alicemaz 6y ago
  same reason it's hard to steer an ocean liner. death rates dominated the way people thought and talked about this for months. now it's clearer death rates are obviously not so bad, but permanent damage and months-long recoveries and unclear immunity profile are massive unknowns, but the inertia of the previous narrative still overwhelms the minority trying to course correct. "we're all going to die" "no we're going to be fine" is much easier to latch onto than "it's more complicated than that and we don't really know." especially since most people got sick of lockdown and many are in grave economic danger because of it. people are doing a mental calculus of "well I'll probably be fine so I think we should open back up" and change their arguments to suit the conclusion they've decided on

opportune 6y ago

I’m part of some online fitness communities and it’s insane the rationalizations people will use to go back to the gym. I have even heard of people driving 3hrs+ or staying overnight to go to out of state gyms with less restrictions. Which is actually very terrible on a macro level. That said I do think it’s possible for gyms to adapt to be covid-safe by moving equipment outside, restricting the max number of people allowed in the exercise area, mandating masks and social distancing, and wiping down every piece of equipment after it’s used. I have seen some gyms doing that in San Jose. But I guess most gyms don’t want to do that even though gyms outside of dense urban area typically have pretty big parking lots they might be able to use with some open-air huts

alicemaz 6y ago
yea my gyms here (texas) have been really good about this, either mandatory masks or open air, mandatory distancing, wipe everything down (my muay thai gym got like a metal exterminators tank for disinfectant they just spray everything with), etc etc. the article makes the point well, that if you close everything down, people will just do it anyway, so it's better to just have it in the open and under control and punish bad actors when they crop up local gyms (as opposed to chain/bigbox) tend to be extremely tight-knit communities, which means people want to keep each other safe and will go out of their way to do it, within reason. most people don't care about everyone in their city in abstract, but they do care about members of groups they derive camaraderie from. hell of a lot safer than reopening restaurants, imo

xkbarkar 6y ago

I think I read this exact comment from my aunt on fb yesterday. She said 3 in 100 though.

showdeadtest 6y ago

I think more and more people are tired of having their jobs, educations, and social activities toyed with like they are trivial things.

kimmeld 6y ago
Social activities are most certainly trivial when compared to a pandemic. Right now my kid’s school is starting remote only primarily because teenagers and early 20’s somethings couldn’t stop going to parties over the summer. Actions have consequences.
- m0zg 6y ago
  And we'll all be paying for reduced quality of education of these kids for the rest of our lives. In my son's school, the only requirement to get an "A" last semester was to turn in _any homework at all_, doesn't matter if it's complete or correct - nobody checked. There are now a lot of "A" students.
- showdeadtest 6y ago
  I think we see the consequences of a plan that is idealistic and unrealistic. I don’t believe any amount of moral handwringing and shouting is going to make it work.
  - deleted 6y ago
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- duud 6y ago
  What about when social isolation is linked to suicide? https://www.amhf.org.au/social_isolation_increases_male_suicide_risk_says_amhf https://www.amhf.org.au/social_isolation_increases_male_suic...
roughly 6y ago

mehrdadn 6y ago

> 1 in 200 chance of death (pretty high by the way) The fatality rate of a car crash is also about 0.5% [1], but that doesn't prevent us from driving. That means there's a piece of the puzzle missing here, right? Note that I'm not concluding this means we should go to gyms (or whatever). I'm just pointing out your analysis is missing an important factor, making it faulty/unconvincing. Edit: Changed the statistic source, because it wasn't measuring what I thought it was measuring. (Which incidentally also gets at the same distinction I was trying to make in my comment.) [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motor_vehicle_fatality_rate_in_U.S._by_year https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motor_vehicle_fatality_rate_in...

diabeetusman 6y ago
That's over your entire lifetime, not a few weeks after getting infected. You don't have a 1% chance of dying in a car accident every time you drive.
- mehrdadn 6y ago
  You're right, but unfortunately it's beside my point. (I took "chances of dying in a car crash" to mean it was the fatality rate of a car crash, which was wrong.) I was trying to find the chances of dying given you have a car crash, not the chances of being in a car crash and dying. (Which I guess leads to the spoiler: this was the distinction I was trying to make. That you can't just draw a conclusion from only looking at the former, which is what that 1% figure is. You need to look at the chances of getting the disease as well.) I updated the quoted source.
  - dmurray 6y ago
    > I was trying to find the chances of dying given you have a car crash, not the chances of being in a car crash and dying. That seems a weird statistic to seek out, because your conclusion would then be "...and we don't try to avoid getting in car crashes to avoid that 0.5% risk of death". Which is wrong, we do and we should try to avoid crashes.

crisdux 6y ago

This post is precisely the issue. The risk for everyone is not 1 in 200. That's what makes this complicated. I'm really struggling with this. How can we reverse all the fear that has damaged our society and given people a sense that they need to exaggerate the danger? Folks don't have capacity for risk analysis or understanding basic statistics, even on a message board like hacker news.

randomchars 6y ago

The question I've never found a reasonably answer for is this: Whats the exit strategy? What has to happen for this to end? For what I've read there's a good chance this virus will stay with us for the long term, just like the flu. Waiting for the vaccine is kind of like hoping for a miracle, as it might not even work. So when will all this madness end?

Spearchucker 6y ago
Right now there is no exist strategy. There are possibilities though. Assuming a vaccine doesn't appear, then we're left with herd immunity through community infection. There are problems with that though, because it's not yet clear whether infection with the COVID-19 virus even makes a person immune to future infection. Amidst all the uncertianty a vaccine is our best hope. Personally I'm assuming this will be with us in some shape or form for many years.
- randomchars 6y ago
  > it's not yet clear whether infection with the COVID-19 virus even makes a person immune to future infection. If you don't become immune after getting the virus, how would you become so after vaccination? My understanding is that vaccines have a weaker version or a portion of the virus inside them, and your body needs to make antibodies. But if that doesn't happen?
  - Spearchucker 6y ago
    Exactly.
lkbm 6y ago
I don't think vaccines are a miracle. They're not certain, but that doesn't make them miracles. The exit strategy should be to enough of a lock-down to get rates very low. This would likely have to be combined with quick-turnaround testing and contact tracing. The US largely failed with this. Other countries show what an exit strategy could have looked like. I'm not sure if it's still viable, but maybe. This is what I wanted a lock-down to bring us, and what maybe still could: * Access to testing: This has improved a lot. In March and April, I knew people with symptoms who couldn't get tested. Last month, my partner found it easy to get tested. * Quick-turn-around with testing: This still sucks. My partner's test in July was easy to get, but the earliest appointment was five days out and it was another five to get the results. This isn't good enough. * Contact tracing: We still don't have this, at least in most places. I would love to install a contact tracing app on my phone, but there isn't one. Seems they're regional, and Texas/Austin hasn't bothered? * A reduction in growth-rates due to social distancing: We got this! Daily growth rate dropped from 1.3+ in mid-March to 1.06-1.08 in mid-April. (I haven't looked recently, but I don't think this has lasted. Still, we were on track to hit 100k deaths by mid-April without this effect.) * New information about how to prevent it: We got some important new information! Turns out surfaces aren't a big deal, and masks are. This is the opposite of what we were told early on, and knowing to wear masks (and more recently, not to use gaiters as masks) is a Big Deal. * Improved treatments: Only thing I've seen is the "proning helps" thing a few months back. * Vaccines: We've made a lot of progress. More than I think experts expected by now. So, yeah, we currently seem to have no real exit strategy other than waiting for a vaccine, or for herd immunity. That doesn't mean it's rational to just exit without a strategy. For now, I'm just going to stay mostly locked down until the vaccine happens or our government decides to step it up and do enough of the things listed above to get the spread under control. Not everyone can do this -- as another commenter mentioned, things that aren't urgent the first week will become so after a month, or six months, and these things are different for different people. But as much as I liked going to the gym, I'm going to continue to forgo that.

drevil-v2 6y ago

Well the lockdowns were intended to "flatten the curve" in the short term not impose China style draconian limits on personal movement until there is a vaccine 18 months later.

seizethecheese 6y ago

> congratulations for not caring about a 1 in 200 chance of death (pretty high by the way) because you're healthy and passing on the risk to some vulnerable person (probably your parents or a school teacher) with a 1 in 10 chance of death. This is wrong and misleading. You're quoting the average fatality rate for "healthy" people, but the distribution doesn't look like that at all. Then, you cherrypick 10% out of nowhere for "parents and school teachers". 10% is the rate for people in their 80s. Real data: "[t]he estimated IFR is close to zero for younger adults but rises exponentially with age, reaching about 0.3% for ages 50-59, 1.3% for ages 60-69, 4% for ages 70-79, 10% for ages 80-89."[1] [1] https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.07.23.20160895v3 https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.07.23.20160895v...

dangc 6y ago
thank you! I really appreciate the effort you put in to clear up the misinformation
WD-42 6y ago
That’s still whole numbers for anyone over 60, and significant numbers still for anyone below it. Have you ever seriously contemplated death? If you have, those numbers don’t seem very good, not at all. Not to mention these are stats for DEATH. Meaning these are the worst case scenario. Dead. The chances of getting seriously ill, like major suffering, are much higher. Would you want to experience that? Would you wish that on others in your community? Suck it up and do some pushups for gods sake.
- seizethecheese 6y ago
  Yes, I've contemplated death. Have you? Here are the chances of dying in a year, for a given age, from actuarial tables: 25 year olds: 0.16% chance of dying 35 year olds: 0.2% chance of dying 45 year olds: 0.3% chance of dying 55 year olds: 0.7% chance of dying 65 year olds: 2% chance of dying 75 year olds: 3.5% 85 year olds: 10% 95 year olds: 26% https://www.ssa.gov/oact/STATS/table4c6.html https://www.ssa.gov/oact/STATS/table4c6.html

arxv33 6y ago

I travelled all over Europe past two months and I must say Europe is quite laxed. And there cases haven’t really gone up. Pretty much every outdoor cafes in Europe were open with a few exceptions and I didn’t see much difference other than people wearing masks and social distancing between tables. I think in US everything is polarized and politicized. To the point that wearing masks is somehow considered against freedom. I believe health officials have some blames to share. They still have not come clean for their initial mask guidelines that was blatantly wrong. I think health authorities will have long time to regain trusts in US. I also feel we don’t quite understand the transmission mechanism fully yet. It’s airborne, at least we know that part but the clusters in nursing homes and indoor parties also indicate there is some mechanisms in play when indoor.

divbzero 6y ago
Europe can be lax now precisely because it was strict early enough and long enough to bring prevalence down to a safer level.
- rootusrootus 6y ago
  I think that is a mistake. Exponential math doesn't fail to work just because you delay it for a while. Everyone started with just one case.
  - deleted 6y ago
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  - FabHK 6y ago
    That is true. One cannot completely relax. The point is that Asia and Europe has by and large managed, after the big initial outbreaks, to keep R in check with moderate, yet consistent measures (social distancing, no large events, masks). When people get careless, it flares up, but can (thanks to decent testing meanwhile) typically be suppressed again with regional lockdowns before it gets really bad.
gvjddbnvdrbv 6y ago

perlbeatdong 6y ago

You are claiming that parents and teachers have a 10% chance of death? Sorry, but this is not true according to every statistic so far. parents of a child living at home are not old. Teachers (people in the workforce) are not old. You're off by a factor of about 100. Stop spreading propaganda.

helaoban 6y ago

Spoken like somebody with no skin in the game. Go preach this nonsense to small business owners that have had their livelihoods taken from them and see how long you can keep your head above the parapet. > Support temporary benefits to your fellow citizens. What benefits? Support how? Prayers? Support that small business in your community with your wallet. > Also congratulations for not caring about a 1 in 200 chance of death. Where's the data to back up any close to an assertion like this? You betray an inane non-appreciation of what is actually happening to people economically. Go out and spend your money, support local businesses. Edit: To address the claim about the 1/200 rate directly, that number is based on bogus 0.5 - 1% global IFR estimates that haven't been controlled for any demographic group. The IFR for people under 70 is less than 0.1, and likely much, much lower for under 40. And that's not even controlling for anything except age.[1] 1. https://www.folkhalsomyndigheten.se/contentassets/53c0dc391be54f5d959ead9131edb771/infection-fatality-rate-covid-19-stockholm-technical-report.pdf https://www.folkhalsomyndigheten.se/contentassets/53c0dc391b...

rocha 6y ago
> Also congratulations for not caring about a 1 in 200 chance of death. >> Where's the data to back up any close to an assertion like this? Latest IFR estimates are between 0.5% and 1.0% (1 in 200 to 1 in 100). https://www.who.int/news-room/commentaries/detail/estimating-mortality-from-covid-19 https://www.who.int/news-room/commentaries/detail/estimating...
- kmm 6y ago
  That's averaged over all ages. For people under 50, it's basically nil, on the order of 1 in 10,000. https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.07.23.20160895v3.full.pdf+html https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.07.23.20160895v...
  - rocha 6y ago
    You are correct. Thanks for pointing it out. Your reference is very good. It is still a pre-print, but the breakdown is very informative. It estimates the IFR (Table 4) for ages between 0-34 as 0.01% (1 in 10,000), increasing exponentially from there. The estimated IFR for the next age group, people between 34-54, is between 0.04% and 0.2% (1 in 2,500 to 1 in 500), one to two orders of magnitude greater. For people over 85, the IFR is 36.8% (~1 in 3). Note that the population over 34 is about 50% of the total in the US.

syshum 6y ago

>>Yes, we can't shut everything down but you'd think the article was about shutting down grocery stores Ahh the old "essential business" justification. Every business is essential to the owners, employees and even customers that depend on those businesses. I do not believe it is the proper role of government to tell people what is and is not "essential" to them. This is with out getting it into the corrupt policies many local government employed where by some businesses where allowed to operate due to political reasons, but other similar businesses were forced to close again for political reasons. Then there was completely illogical enforcement where small retail businesses where forced to close even when they were doing Online Only sales and the only person in the store was the owner.[2] Mike Rowe is correct: all workers are essential.[1] [1] https://fee.org/articles/mike-rowe-is-right-there-s-no-such-thing-as-a-non-essential-worker/ https://fee.org/articles/mike-rowe-is-right-there-s-no-such-... [2] http://newjersey.news12.com/story/42155935/police-interrupt-business-owner-as-she-was-selling-items-on-facebook-live http://newjersey.news12.com/story/42155935/police-interrupt-...

Press2forEN 6y ago

Consider it getting into "good trouble."

csomar 6y ago

How is this different from the TSA for protecting you from terrorists? Or how is this different from the Internet and freedom of speech censorship for protecting you from child porn. Reality Check: It's not different. People should stop from thinking they have a higher moral ground. Nobody does. On the other hand, on a free society, you should not be able to strip people from their freedom, regardless. People should be able to decide if they want to die from Coronavirus or live a semi-paralyzed life in fear. If you are that concerned, then you can confine yourself at home until everything is over. Also humanity and evolution has a coping mechanism called natural selection. Helping people through medicine is a good idea but I think we are stretching it too much. In a few hundreds year, everyone will be walking on earth on a space suit.

Rapzid 6y ago
I'm super glad we don't live in that lawless society TBH! One of the best features of government is, IMHO, that we can use it to all agree to abide by having certain "freedoms" inhibited for the greater good where we otherwise wouldn't be able to. Rule of law was a fantastic invention..
Uehreka 6y ago
> Also humanity and evolution has a coping mechanism called natural selection. So the phrase "Survival of the Fittest" refers in the abstract to the idea that, given fitness function F, members of a species who pass fitness function F will out-survive members who fail function F and then reproduce in higher numbers. But natural selection itself does not define any fitness functions, and makes no mention of a "universal fitness quality" that can be used to judge the fitness of an individual. The fitness functions that nature comes up with are pretty arbitrary, and don't necessarily align with cultural ideas about merit, fitness or attractiveness. A disease that weakens bones could kill more tall people than short people, a disorder that exploits muscle tissue might affect people who work out more, and a respiratory disease that spreads through the air could take down more sociable people while allowing introverts who stay inside to survive. The point of modern medicine is that we recognize these many of these fitness functions have no meaning beyond the immediate danger they present. And we can use technology to say "that fitness function is dumb" and remove it from the equation. In doing so, we aren't "unlearning a lesson nature wanted us to learn", we're protecting ourselves from the meaningless and arbitrary rocks that nature occasionally throws at us, and as a result we are increasing human lifespan and quality of life. (And yes, you can quibble about stretching out the suffering of people with terminal cancer, but the millions of children who don't pointlessly die of infant diarrhea each year would probably push back a bit)

ImaCake 6y ago

Yes, the comments here are insane. You might only get something like the flu, but your grandma is going to be killed by this, or at least crippled. Same with your parents! The people commenting here seem very selfish.

achenatx 6y ago

there is also the probability of transmission. People living together in the same home is about a 20% chance of transmission. Casual contact( sitting nearby) is estimated to be about .7% The total probability of hospitalization per contact is prevalence * transmission rate * hospitalization rate so it is probably something like 1% * .7% * 3% per contact. So your probability of getting hospitalized is quite low per contact. I personally have a bike trainer and a power cage at home. The one thing I absolutely miss is brazilian jiu jitsu. I see posts from the various gyms that are basically operating in full.

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

nradov 6y ago

Those measures are obviously not sustainable indefinitely. What is the exit criteria?

ekianjo 6y ago

> Also congratulations for not caring about a 1 in 200 chance of death (pretty high by the way) because you're healthy and passing on the risk to some vulnerable person (probably your parents or a school teacher) with a 1 in 10 chance of death Where do you get these numbers from?

perlbeatdong 6y ago
he assumed you are 70, and the parents and teachers are 85, in order to spread misinformation and propaganda, to fit a political agenda. his comment was then upvoted to the top. he is off by a factor of over 100. when i stated that, the real information was removed by the moderator. that should tell you something about the people here. this site is the news channel of a vc firm.

stjohnswarts 6y ago

Everyone knows these things by now, why do people keep repeating it? you think the people going to the speakeasy gyms haven't heard it 100 times? The article points out that in general some people will always find a way.

kerabatsos 6y ago

Americans have always been and will always be a “me first” populace.

lobotryas 6y ago

You’re going to write all that when BLM protest and Portland _riots_ are going on? Hundreds or thousands of people close up together breathing hard with or without masks?? Get outta here, you phony.

crunchybackbone 6y ago
protests = outdoors. gyms=indoors. calling a protest a riot doesn't put it indoors. gyms, shopping, etc are much more dangerous than being outside at a protest.

gjs278 6y ago

i’m going to go out and volunteer at a nursing home so we can afford the benefits for my fellow citizens. we’re wasting the money on keeping the old people alive.

themeiguoren 6y ago

So what about those young healthy people that interact with no one who’s at risk? I’m in my mid 20’s, and the best upper bound I’ve seen on risk of death for someone my age who is otherwise healthy is 0.05%. Not nothing, but comparable to 2 years of driving and well within the level of risk we give people agency to make decisions about every day. I’ve been through lockdown and I know what that huge hit to quality of life means to me, and the risk of covid is worth it to not have to live that way again. My fear is solely that I pass it to someone at higher risk, and to that end I’m working from home, masking up, and there isn’t a single person in my life over the age of 40. But I’m also not holding back on seeing friends my age, and yes even throwing parties. We’re all in the same boat, and if they’re also out and about then they’ve made the decision that they’re comfortable with that level of risk themselves. I don’t think it’s a crazy one, and so I’m not going to make it for them.

centimeter 6y ago

> not caring about a 1 in 200 chance of death My chance of death is vastly less than that - probably on the order of 1-10% that.

sershe 6y ago

To preface, I disagree on the pandemic damage vs lockdowns damage (other than the economy, projected increase in deaths from heart disease, cancer, increase in suicides and domestic violence and (in the developing world) starvation, malaria, tuberculosis, reported by UN and WHO). I also estimate the risks of COVID to be 10-20x of flu (and I had a relative who died from flu complications - maths is still maths), so I take 20x the precautions compared to what I do for flu in a year when I forget to get the shot... 20x of almost nothing is just a little more than nothing. But that has been discussed above, with much better words and numbers. I only have one unique contribution. A little bonus that made me happy to go outside to closed outdoor areas during stay-home orders, visit (willing) friends at the height of the lockdown, and hit the gyms and restaurants as soon as they opened with work-to-rule mask wearing and distancing, is that it makes unjustifiably sanctimonious people angry.