3 ms·
Deaths. There is so much beyond "merely" dying within the actual events that unfolded and continue. Only less than 60,000[0] people die per year from influenza
by cartoonworld 5y ago
Deaths. There is so much beyond "merely" dying within the actual events that unfolded and continue.
Only less than 60,000[0] people die per year from influenza, a family of viruses that is well understood, vaccines somewhat effective and available, and almost everybody has some immunological response against due to previous exposure. Tens of millions are affected by influenza yearly, it stops their work for weeks, causes their family to stop their work and care for them, causes errors and economic cost, social cost, etc. People hate influenza and it does result in critical hospitalizations and death among people all over the place. Mostly old people die from that too, but it ruins everybody's productivity.
A novel virus that is at best like influenza, with an additional asymptomatic cadre, affecting the entire country or world, with a completely naive immune response? You should read Guns, Germs, and Steel[1]
We are clearly capable of acting against and preventing Sars-CoV-2 infection, we are as yet unable to cure aging. How preposterous.
[0] - https://www.cdc.gov/flu/about/burden/index.html https://www.cdc.gov/flu/about/burden/index.html
[1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guns,_Germs,_and_Steel https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guns,_Germs,_and_Steel
- xvector 5y agoPeople are not fighting COVID because of the productivity impact but because of the deaths, otherwise we'd treat it like the flu. > we are as yet unable to cure aging. How preposterous. We put zero effort into anti-aging research but we moved the world for COVID. If we put the same amount of effort into anti-aging research, a cure to aging could be well within most people's lifetimes, effectively saving billions of lives.
- inglor_cz 5y agoMy impression is that COVID is problematic because a lot of people spend weeks on the ICU. The death toll itself is not that big, but having ICUs overflowing is a bad thing. ICUs were built to take care about acute problems and there is a silent expectation that most patients admitted into ICU care either die quickly or recover enough within 2-3 days to be transferred into regular care. Having people around on ventilators for weeks destroys logistics of ICU systems. We put way more than zero research into anti-aging research. Granted, COVID attracted a lot more money and attention, but anti-aging research is gaining traction. And with the tech moguls of SV aging, you can bet on some extra investments. I for one don't believe that people like Bezos (a notorious fitness and health fanatic) are just going to succumb to natural aging without a fight.
- CryptoPunk 5y agoThe number of deaths has been the overwhelming concern of public health authorities and other major decision makers. Even the concern over ICU capacity depletion has largely stemmed from the concern that this would increase covid mortality.
- cartoonworld 5y agowe are treating it like a flu to which we are completely immunogically naive. this kind of thing is not mysterious. its a natural disaster or global catastrophe and its happened before. we have also had the mrna technology for over a decade. if we put the coronavirus effort into aging or global warming, we would not have solutions in 1year. masks and hygeine dont work for aging. it is a totally different problem space and not comparable in the least.