7 ms·

Covid is just a symptom of bigger underlying epidemic: It's an epidemic of depression and anxiety ravaging through society, which doesn't spare anybody. I bec

by GDC7 5y ago

Covid is just a symptom of bigger underlying epidemic: It's an epidemic of depression and anxiety ravaging through society, which doesn't spare anybody. I became interested in Sweden's approach of not doing anything at all , per the John Hopkins University website COVID deaths in Sweden are 15,000. 15k in 2 years, now how many months/weeks were trimmed off those people's lives? Note that I said months/weeks, not years. Back in the 1990s or the 2000s we'd have not even noticed that COVID even existed, not to mention the 1970s and 1980s. How many COVIDs came and went through the human history without us noticing? Diseases and virus didn't change. We did. We are much more depressed and anxious. The end all be all seems to be existing, not living. To avoid any downside risk in order to stay around. If you plan your life with the goal of staying around, pretty soon you would not want to stay around any longer.

icedchai 5y ago
Why do you think we wouldn't have noticed it in the 90's and 2000's? When hospitals fill up, people are definitely going to notice. There were flu outbreaks in the 60's and 70's and people noticed. When comparing "different approaches" you need to look at many factors: population density, environment (average temperature), living conditions (like multi-generational families living together.) Countries are not directly comparable for this reason.
- GDC7 5y ago
  > There were flu outbreaks in the 60's and 70's and people noticed No, they didn't. The population back then wasn't as depressed and anxious as today's population. They didn't extrapolate figures and trends and charts. They were not bombarded by news on 5 different screen devices. They'd notice when 5,6,7 or even 10 people they knew, and in the same age/health cohort as them would become incapacitated for more than 4 weeks, but in order to really notice it the same amount of people would have to be dying from the disease. How many people you know became incapacitated for more than 4 weeks because of COVID? 2 years into it how many died?
  - icedchai 5y ago
    I suspect neither of us were around then, so we can't really say, on a personal level, whether we would've noticed the 1968 flu pandemic. But the fact is millions of people died, and millions more got sick. Television and news papers were obviously around then, so people would've been talking about it. We are definitely more connected today, but to claim it "would not have been noticed" is an exaggeration. As for Covid, I personally know at least 5 people who got sick, 1 was out of work for 4 weeks, though none died. How about you?
    - GDC7 5y ago
      > whether we would've noticed the 1968 flu pandemic What do your parents tell you about that year? Students protests Vietnam War Woodstock Moon landing Drugs African Americans finally getting their voices heard. Nobody ever mentions the 1968 flu pandemic, given how things are 50 years from now we'd still be talking about COVID and fearing its #100,000 variant. > As for Covid, I personally know at least 5 people who got sick, 1 was out of work for 4 weeks, though none died. How about you? 1 got sick, recovered in 8 days. Considering the median individual has a circle of 200 people they know. It's 1/200 for me and 1/200 for you.
      - icedchai 5y ago
        Certainly, tons of stuff happened during that time. However, my parents actually did mention the 1968 flu pandemic (though it was prompted by covid discussions, it wasn't just out of the blue.) But yeah, you're probably right... if things keep up like this, we won't go back to normal due to anxiety and fear. I can see this going on for additional years.
        sharken 5y ago
        Only if we let it. We seriously have no clue to the bad effects of shutting down and limiting our society in this manner. In my country we had a serious flu in 2017/18 that nobody remembers anymore. Back then the number of hospitalized were more than double of the current numbers. And yet here we are with new restrictions going into effect. It's time to say enough is enough and elect politicians that can treat Corona as a disease we have to live with.
- _Microft 5y ago
  Also: don’t confuse the actions of Swedes with the inaction of their officials.
didibus 5y ago
Sweden didn't do nothing. Most of the streets were empty for all of 2020. Everyone that could work from home started doing so. People avoided social contact and travel. It imposed entry bans, and 68% of its population are now fully vaccinated, 80% ages 16 and up. I think people underestimate social awareness, even if there is no official restrictions, people have their own worries and take their own precautions. This makes it very hard to actually learn anything useful from Sweden's policy in my opinion. Because we're not so much interested with the official policies, more so with the actual behavior of the people and what worked or didn't with regards to that.
- keymon-o 5y ago
  >I think people underestimate social awareness Not that I disagree with you, but I'd guess that social awareness is a product of having a trustful sources of information coming from trustworthy and capable leaders/government. It seems to me that handling of covid crisis is clearly correlated with how well people of a certain country do trust and respect their elected leaders. Edit: It all reminds me of an excercise from some teamwork and leadership class, where there was a given logical problem to be solved in 45 minutes between teammates. And no matter how smart, proactive, arrogant or quiet members they had, all the teams failed to solve a problem. The issue was everybody participating in solving a problem which turned into 45 hour debate, rather than having a leader coordinating the path to solution. It may be an oversimplifaction, but when you have a crisis which you don't know how to solve, you can at least try to handle it the best you can. Without trust in leadership, it will be chaotic.
  - ajuc 5y ago
    Team programming competitions are like that, and basically the strategy is to give everybody on the team 10 minutes to read all tasks and choose the one they are confident they can solve and then work in parallel. No time for coordination overhead. If you talk about everything you won't finish even one task. But COVID response is nothing like that - we've had months before it got to Europe and over a year at this point. So I don't think it's a good analogy.
thisiszilff 5y ago
We definitely noticed the 2009-2010 swine flu pandemic, it just wasn't as deadly as COVID. Most pandemics in past memory have been minor in nature. We likely were aware of them, but didn't feel their impact because they caused mild illness or were limited in scope (eg, with SARS, ebola) and didn't directly impact people's lives. COVID does impact people's lives and the closest referent we have is the Spanish flu in 1918 which is far outside of anyone's historical memory. I'm not necessarily disputing your point about depression and anxiety, sure those may have increased as well, but COVID isn't anything like the other pandemics we've had in recent memory.
- GDC7 5y ago
  > Spanish flu in 1918 How many people you know died of COVID? The spanish flu had roughly 1 death every 2/3 families. Honestly you are comparing a firecracker to a nuclear weapon, and if you want to do that, then you have to produce the proofs.
  - nobodyandproud 5y ago
    Weren’t families much larger in 1918? I know two people who died from Covid-19, and my circle of friends and acquaintances is fairly small. This, despite precautions and modern medicine.
  - modriano 5y ago
    The Spanish flu of 1918 killed ~675k people in the US [0] and the US population was 105M [1], so the Spanish flu killed off a bit more than 0.6% of the entire US population, or about 1 in 150 people. Despite massive improvements in sanitation and ability to distance from others, COVID has still killed a bit more than 0.2% of the entire US population in the past 2 years. These pandemics are comparable. [0] https://www.cdc.gov/flu/pandemic-resources/1918-pandemic-h1n1.html https://www.cdc.gov/flu/pandemic-resources/1918-pandemic-h1n... [1] https://www.webmd.com/lung/news/20210920/covid-matches-1918_flu_pandemic_for_deaths#:~:text=In%201918%2C%20the%20U.S.%20population,million%20people%20in%20America%20today https://www.webmd.com/lung/news/20210920/covid-matches-1918_....
sjg007 5y ago
Peru effectively didn't do anything at all and it has the highest death rate of all countries. https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2021/11/27/1057387896/peru-has-the-worlds-highest-covid-death-rate-heres-why https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2021/11/27/1057387...

by GDC7 5y ago

icedchai 5y ago

Why do you think we wouldn't have noticed it in the 90's and 2000's? When hospitals fill up, people are definitely going to notice. There were flu outbreaks in the 60's and 70's and people noticed. When comparing "different approaches" you need to look at many factors: population density, environment (average temperature), living conditions (like multi-generational families living together.) Countries are not directly comparable for this reason.

GDC7 5y ago
> There were flu outbreaks in the 60's and 70's and people noticed No, they didn't. The population back then wasn't as depressed and anxious as today's population. They didn't extrapolate figures and trends and charts. They were not bombarded by news on 5 different screen devices. They'd notice when 5,6,7 or even 10 people they knew, and in the same age/health cohort as them would become incapacitated for more than 4 weeks, but in order to really notice it the same amount of people would have to be dying from the disease. How many people you know became incapacitated for more than 4 weeks because of COVID? 2 years into it how many died?
- icedchai 5y ago
  I suspect neither of us were around then, so we can't really say, on a personal level, whether we would've noticed the 1968 flu pandemic. But the fact is millions of people died, and millions more got sick. Television and news papers were obviously around then, so people would've been talking about it. We are definitely more connected today, but to claim it "would not have been noticed" is an exaggeration. As for Covid, I personally know at least 5 people who got sick, 1 was out of work for 4 weeks, though none died. How about you?
  - GDC7 5y ago
    > whether we would've noticed the 1968 flu pandemic What do your parents tell you about that year? Students protests Vietnam War Woodstock Moon landing Drugs African Americans finally getting their voices heard. Nobody ever mentions the 1968 flu pandemic, given how things are 50 years from now we'd still be talking about COVID and fearing its #100,000 variant. > As for Covid, I personally know at least 5 people who got sick, 1 was out of work for 4 weeks, though none died. How about you? 1 got sick, recovered in 8 days. Considering the median individual has a circle of 200 people they know. It's 1/200 for me and 1/200 for you.
    - icedchai 5y ago
      Certainly, tons of stuff happened during that time. However, my parents actually did mention the 1968 flu pandemic (though it was prompted by covid discussions, it wasn't just out of the blue.) But yeah, you're probably right... if things keep up like this, we won't go back to normal due to anxiety and fear. I can see this going on for additional years.
      - sharken 5y ago
        Only if we let it. We seriously have no clue to the bad effects of shutting down and limiting our society in this manner. In my country we had a serious flu in 2017/18 that nobody remembers anymore. Back then the number of hospitalized were more than double of the current numbers. And yet here we are with new restrictions going into effect. It's time to say enough is enough and elect politicians that can treat Corona as a disease we have to live with.
_Microft 5y ago
Also: don’t confuse the actions of Swedes with the inaction of their officials.

didibus 5y ago

Sweden didn't do nothing. Most of the streets were empty for all of 2020. Everyone that could work from home started doing so. People avoided social contact and travel. It imposed entry bans, and 68% of its population are now fully vaccinated, 80% ages 16 and up. I think people underestimate social awareness, even if there is no official restrictions, people have their own worries and take their own precautions. This makes it very hard to actually learn anything useful from Sweden's policy in my opinion. Because we're not so much interested with the official policies, more so with the actual behavior of the people and what worked or didn't with regards to that.

keymon-o 5y ago
>I think people underestimate social awareness Not that I disagree with you, but I'd guess that social awareness is a product of having a trustful sources of information coming from trustworthy and capable leaders/government. It seems to me that handling of covid crisis is clearly correlated with how well people of a certain country do trust and respect their elected leaders. Edit: It all reminds me of an excercise from some teamwork and leadership class, where there was a given logical problem to be solved in 45 minutes between teammates. And no matter how smart, proactive, arrogant or quiet members they had, all the teams failed to solve a problem. The issue was everybody participating in solving a problem which turned into 45 hour debate, rather than having a leader coordinating the path to solution. It may be an oversimplifaction, but when you have a crisis which you don't know how to solve, you can at least try to handle it the best you can. Without trust in leadership, it will be chaotic.
- ajuc 5y ago
  Team programming competitions are like that, and basically the strategy is to give everybody on the team 10 minutes to read all tasks and choose the one they are confident they can solve and then work in parallel. No time for coordination overhead. If you talk about everything you won't finish even one task. But COVID response is nothing like that - we've had months before it got to Europe and over a year at this point. So I don't think it's a good analogy.

thisiszilff 5y ago

We definitely noticed the 2009-2010 swine flu pandemic, it just wasn't as deadly as COVID. Most pandemics in past memory have been minor in nature. We likely were aware of them, but didn't feel their impact because they caused mild illness or were limited in scope (eg, with SARS, ebola) and didn't directly impact people's lives. COVID does impact people's lives and the closest referent we have is the Spanish flu in 1918 which is far outside of anyone's historical memory. I'm not necessarily disputing your point about depression and anxiety, sure those may have increased as well, but COVID isn't anything like the other pandemics we've had in recent memory.

GDC7 5y ago
> Spanish flu in 1918 How many people you know died of COVID? The spanish flu had roughly 1 death every 2/3 families. Honestly you are comparing a firecracker to a nuclear weapon, and if you want to do that, then you have to produce the proofs.
- nobodyandproud 5y ago
  Weren’t families much larger in 1918? I know two people who died from Covid-19, and my circle of friends and acquaintances is fairly small. This, despite precautions and modern medicine.
- modriano 5y ago
  The Spanish flu of 1918 killed ~675k people in the US [0] and the US population was 105M [1], so the Spanish flu killed off a bit more than 0.6% of the entire US population, or about 1 in 150 people. Despite massive improvements in sanitation and ability to distance from others, COVID has still killed a bit more than 0.2% of the entire US population in the past 2 years. These pandemics are comparable. [0] https://www.cdc.gov/flu/pandemic-resources/1918-pandemic-h1n1.html https://www.cdc.gov/flu/pandemic-resources/1918-pandemic-h1n... [1] https://www.webmd.com/lung/news/20210920/covid-matches-1918_flu_pandemic_for_deaths#:~:text=In%201918%2C%20the%20U.S.%20population,million%20people%20in%20America%20today https://www.webmd.com/lung/news/20210920/covid-matches-1918_....

sjg007 5y ago

Peru effectively didn't do anything at all and it has the highest death rate of all countries. https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2021/11/27/1057387896/peru-has-the-worlds-highest-covid-death-rate-heres-why https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2021/11/27/1057387...