3 ms·

A <1% death rate was enough to cause the lockdowns in 2020. If the media ran this endlessly, saying you'll have 30% less chance of stroke or dementia if you dr

A <1% death rate was enough to cause the lockdowns in 2020. If the media ran this endlessly, saying you'll have 30% less chance of stroke or dementia if you drink coffee and tea, people would probably panic on that too.

rebuilder 5y ago
This study was conducted over 10+ years, the COVID numbers are probably per case, or possibly annualised.
icoder 5y ago
Not sure about your country, but here the main problem was (and is again) the risk of an overrun health care system.
- dahfizz 5y ago
  A large uptick in strokes would cause a similar issue, no? You can put that spin on anything. DISCLAIMER: I am not downplaying the severity of Covid. My words mean exactly what they say.
  - sokoloff 5y ago
    That seems to depend on the typical duration of stay of a stroke patient in the various departments (emergency, ICU, general in-patient). I'm not familiar with stroke treatment, but from anecdotal exposure in my extended family's experience, they did not result in extended ICU stays.
  - icoder 5y ago
    A large enough uptick in strokes at some point will, yes, but I don't think coffee/tea consumption will have that effect, plus our current consumption clearly _doesn't_, while Covid clearly _does_. (At least where I live, ICU's were previously not overrun due to anything) It's not a spin, it's just the daily struggle of the health care system right now. I see no other solution but to take that seriously. That doesn't mean we should take this study as serious just because it discusses something that may lead to something that, by itself, with a theoretical (large enough) uptick would overrun the system too.
  - saltcured 5y ago
    Strokes are not contagious and do not spread exponentially through a population, overwhelming the health care system all at once. Things like smoking and lung cancer, or lifestyle related metabolic disorders might cause a lot of health care cost down the road, but they don't cause highly synchronized hospitalization throughout the population. Some hypothetical, stroke-causing, meme-like behavior which can spread rapidly would have to be quite insidious to spread as effectively as COVID-19, cause a temporally correlated medical event, and not be self-limiting. The closest I can think of, off hand, are spikes in drug overdoses or things like suicide clusters. But those are examples are self-limiting, in that most people seem to recognize that they do not want to have that outcome.
dtech 5y ago
That <1% death rate is only with every serious infected getting adequate care. If the disease went further out of control and intensive-care, oxygen etc. was no longer available it would be much higher.
- starwind 5y ago
  and early on it looked like 6% of people who showed COVID symptoms died. We didn't know what the death rate was early on

rebuilder 5y ago

This study was conducted over 10+ years, the COVID numbers are probably per case, or possibly annualised.

icoder 5y ago

Not sure about your country, but here the main problem was (and is again) the risk of an overrun health care system.

dahfizz 5y ago
A large uptick in strokes would cause a similar issue, no? You can put that spin on anything. DISCLAIMER: I am not downplaying the severity of Covid. My words mean exactly what they say.
- sokoloff 5y ago
  That seems to depend on the typical duration of stay of a stroke patient in the various departments (emergency, ICU, general in-patient). I'm not familiar with stroke treatment, but from anecdotal exposure in my extended family's experience, they did not result in extended ICU stays.
- icoder 5y ago
  A large enough uptick in strokes at some point will, yes, but I don't think coffee/tea consumption will have that effect, plus our current consumption clearly _doesn't_, while Covid clearly _does_. (At least where I live, ICU's were previously not overrun due to anything) It's not a spin, it's just the daily struggle of the health care system right now. I see no other solution but to take that seriously. That doesn't mean we should take this study as serious just because it discusses something that may lead to something that, by itself, with a theoretical (large enough) uptick would overrun the system too.
- saltcured 5y ago
  Strokes are not contagious and do not spread exponentially through a population, overwhelming the health care system all at once. Things like smoking and lung cancer, or lifestyle related metabolic disorders might cause a lot of health care cost down the road, but they don't cause highly synchronized hospitalization throughout the population. Some hypothetical, stroke-causing, meme-like behavior which can spread rapidly would have to be quite insidious to spread as effectively as COVID-19, cause a temporally correlated medical event, and not be self-limiting. The closest I can think of, off hand, are spikes in drug overdoses or things like suicide clusters. But those are examples are self-limiting, in that most people seem to recognize that they do not want to have that outcome.

dtech 5y ago

That <1% death rate is only with every serious infected getting adequate care. If the disease went further out of control and intensive-care, oxygen etc. was no longer available it would be much higher.

starwind 5y ago
and early on it looked like 6% of people who showed COVID symptoms died. We didn't know what the death rate was early on