4 ms·
Covid-19 is a baby bike with training wheels. And we fail disastrously at that. It is far from the worse scenario epidemiologists train for, but it could easily
by Iv 5y ago
Covid-19 is a baby bike with training wheels. And we fail disastrously at that. It is far from the worse scenario epidemiologists train for, but it could easily become one: a variant with high lethality can always appear suddenly.
And yes, malaria is not discussed enough. I remember Bill Gates releasing mosquitos in a room before a speech to get the public attention "these could carry a deadly disease we have no cure for"
- koheripbal 5y agoYou know, that's complicated... A more deadly virus, as we saw with SARS, was that it was actually easier to control because the high death rate made it very easy to contact trace and identify infected. In many ways covid19 is a challenge exactly because it doesnt kill too many people.
- gizmo686 5y agoUnfourtuantly, this correlation is not always the case. HIV is extremely deadly without treatment, but has an asymptomatic stage that can last over a decade despite still being infectious during that time. The silver lining with HIV is that its modality of transmission is primarily sex and blood, which greatly limits the number of contacts an infected individual will have. An airborne disease with the lethality, incubation length of infectivity, and vaccine resistance of HIV would be a slow moving disaster of an unimaginable magnitude. I am not aware of any theoretical reason such a disease cannot exist.
- jhayward 5y agoIt wasn't the death rate of SARS that made it easy to control, it was the lack of an infectious period pre-symptoms.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]