2 ms·

I was thinking "Strep...no, probably RSV, strep doesn't cause pneumonia or infect 1-year-olds" when I read your post. People don't really understand exponentia

I was thinking "Strep...no, probably RSV, strep doesn't cause pneumonia or infect 1-year-olds" when I read your post. People don't really understand exponential growth or probabilities. If you were sick with a respiratory virus in Jan 2020, it was almost certainly cold, flu, or RSV. If you were sick with a respiratory virus in Jan 2021, it was almost certainly either a cold or COVID. COVID was doubling roughly every 5 days from a zoonosis in late October 2019, so by Jan 2020 we'd expect about 2^12 = 4096 cases worldwide = 1 in a million odds. But it spreads more readily than flu and RSV, so the countermeasures we put in place to stop COVID basically completed halted flu/RSV transmission over 2020.

jjeaff 5y ago
I can't find any mention of RSV causing loss of smell or taste. In fact, it seems that a lot of information out there indicates that loss of taste or smell is sort of a hallmark of vivid as it is not something that happens with other viruses. Is loss of taste or smell actually rather common?
- nradov 5y ago
  Loss of smell (anosmia) is a symptom of many other viruses. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/17277621/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/17277621/
bradydjohnson 5y ago
Erm, your first thought is way off. Streptococcus pneumoniae is actually the #1 cause of pneumonia. Streptococcus agalactiae also commonly causes pneumonia in infants.
criticaltinker 5y ago
> COVID was doubling roughly every 5 days Can you provide any citation or reference on this claim? 5 days sounds about right to me, but I'm not yet aware of any literature supporting that number so I would be grateful to learn more.