4 ms·
Covid-19 stopped killing people
- quag 6y agoThe equivalent graphs for the USA have Covid-19 still killing people. https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/us/ https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/us/
- jfoster 6y agoIt's interesting, isn't it? What's the difference between the two? A few possibilities: 1. Having been through big outbreaks, some countries are now doing a much better job of coping with it. (protecting vulnerable, treatments, etc.) 2. In some countries the dominant strain has become milder. (though wouldn't the deadly strain also still circulate, resulting in just fewer deaths?) 3. It already got to the vulnerable people in France. (though surely there would be somewhat more deaths, not almost none?) 4. False positives in PCR testing. (I'm no expert, but it seems there are particular ways to run the test that may result in increased incidence of false positives) What other possibilities are there?
- burlesona 6y agoMisleading title as this is just a link to the case graph for France. We’ve seen plenty of similar trend in the US already - the large waves of the summer were seemingly much less deadly than the first intense wave around New York. However, there is a likely combination that explains this: 1. The initial wave in New York was vastly larger than our testing capacity, which means it was actually less deadly than the official statistics show. 2. Early waves of infection spread among the general populace, later waves have spread more among the young and healthy as those at higher risk are being more careful in avoiding social contact, while the young and healthy are being less cautious. Taken together these two factors mean we don’t know much about whether COVID has changed. Because the real infections are larger by an unknown amount, it’s not possible to know whether it is merely being detected more now, or it is infecting less vulnerable people, or if anything else has changed.