3 ms·

Indeed! I really hope governments will start recognising this and give us back our freedom. Media messages and restrictions are still pretty negative, despite t

Indeed! I really hope governments will start recognising this and give us back our freedom. Media messages and restrictions are still pretty negative, despite the lack of severity. I don't know how can they talk about another lockdown. Delta also had lower mortality than the first wave: this was confirmed by some fact-checkers and not by others (depending on how alarmist the fact-checker is) but looking at numbers, it does seem to be case. It seems to be an evolutionary trend where the virus mutations that are successful became more transmissible and less deadly (probably because a dead host doesn't spread as much as an alive one).

johnchristopher 5y ago
> It seems to be an evolutionary trend where the virus mutations that are successful became more transmissible and less deadly (probably because a dead host doesn't spread as much as an alive one). Covid spreads while still being non-symptomatic so that explanation doesn't stand that much. Flu is not getting milder. Also, how many times more do you think you can get hit in the face by Manny Pacquiao instead of Mike Tyson and survive because his punches are milder ? How many times can we keep catching mild covid and escape long term damages (edit: and death and everything in between) ?
kiba 5y ago
Indeed! I really hope governments will start recognising this and give us back our freedom. Media messages and restrictions are still pretty negative, despite the lack of severity. I don't know how can they talk about another lockdown. A lockdown is probably impractical at this point, but we are stuck with a disease that will be a health burden on humanity that will be difficult to eliminate. For example, if a disease kills 40,000 people per year. That's 400,000 people in a decade. A drop in the bucket of humanity for sure, but that's about a city size population. That's not counting the collectively lost days in term of feeling terrible.
- indigochill 5y ago
  > For example, if a disease kills 40,000 people per year. That's 400,000 people in a decade. A drop in the bucket of humanity for sure, but that's about a city size population. That's not counting the collectively lost days in term of feeling terrible. Heart disease kills 659,000 people a year in the US alone (https://www.cdc.gov/heartdisease/facts.htm https://www.cdc.gov/heartdisease/facts.htm), but for some reason we're not having COVID-level panic about it. I'm struggling to find annual statistics for COVID, but I did find an article written September '21 stating there had been over 630,000 COVID deaths in the US since the start of 2020, so that's over a year and a half-ish, so a bit less than heart disease. Of course, heart disease isn't contagious (at least not in the traditional sense - genetics and lifestyle factors could be considered contagious if you're flexible with the term), but it's also a cause of death we've grown disconcertingly accustomed to for how prevalent it is. I expect once this outbreak has run its course, we'll probably see annual COVID deaths settle at a much lower number thanks to vaccinations/immunity. I'm not sure when we'll come to accept it as just another risk of life, though.
  - pessimizer 5y ago
    I don't understand this argument at all. Are you saying that if heart disease went from killing 650 thousand people a year to 1.3 million people a year, that wouldn't cause a massive freakout?
  - fader 5y ago
    > Heart disease kills 659,000 people a year in the US alone (https://www.cdc.gov/heartdisease/facts.htm https://www.cdc.gov/heartdisease/facts.htm), but for some reason we're not having COVID-level panic about it. I think you answered this yourself: > Of course, heart disease isn't contagious If heart disease were contagious and could be effectively curtailed by wearing masks and getting a vaccine, I think you'd see a similar reaction to it that you're seeing to covid.
  - conception 5y ago
    Heart disease is not collapsing the health system. Why are we bothering to compare them.
ummonk 5y ago
Delta had equal or higher severity per infection than alpha which in turn had higher severity than the original variant. It just had lower mortality than the first wave because people had higher preexisting immunity, treatment had improved, and some of the most vulnerable had already been culled from the herd. You have to compare between two variants at the same time, not against previous waves. Omicron is the first major variant to actually be less severe on this metric.
nradov 5y ago
Freedom is seldom given. It usually has to be taken.

johnchristopher 5y ago

> It seems to be an evolutionary trend where the virus mutations that are successful became more transmissible and less deadly (probably because a dead host doesn't spread as much as an alive one). Covid spreads while still being non-symptomatic so that explanation doesn't stand that much. Flu is not getting milder. Also, how many times more do you think you can get hit in the face by Manny Pacquiao instead of Mike Tyson and survive because his punches are milder ? How many times can we keep catching mild covid and escape long term damages (edit: and death and everything in between) ?

kiba 5y ago

Indeed! I really hope governments will start recognising this and give us back our freedom. Media messages and restrictions are still pretty negative, despite the lack of severity. I don't know how can they talk about another lockdown. A lockdown is probably impractical at this point, but we are stuck with a disease that will be a health burden on humanity that will be difficult to eliminate. For example, if a disease kills 40,000 people per year. That's 400,000 people in a decade. A drop in the bucket of humanity for sure, but that's about a city size population. That's not counting the collectively lost days in term of feeling terrible.

indigochill 5y ago
> For example, if a disease kills 40,000 people per year. That's 400,000 people in a decade. A drop in the bucket of humanity for sure, but that's about a city size population. That's not counting the collectively lost days in term of feeling terrible. Heart disease kills 659,000 people a year in the US alone (https://www.cdc.gov/heartdisease/facts.htm https://www.cdc.gov/heartdisease/facts.htm), but for some reason we're not having COVID-level panic about it. I'm struggling to find annual statistics for COVID, but I did find an article written September '21 stating there had been over 630,000 COVID deaths in the US since the start of 2020, so that's over a year and a half-ish, so a bit less than heart disease. Of course, heart disease isn't contagious (at least not in the traditional sense - genetics and lifestyle factors could be considered contagious if you're flexible with the term), but it's also a cause of death we've grown disconcertingly accustomed to for how prevalent it is. I expect once this outbreak has run its course, we'll probably see annual COVID deaths settle at a much lower number thanks to vaccinations/immunity. I'm not sure when we'll come to accept it as just another risk of life, though.
- pessimizer 5y ago
  I don't understand this argument at all. Are you saying that if heart disease went from killing 650 thousand people a year to 1.3 million people a year, that wouldn't cause a massive freakout?
- fader 5y ago
  > Heart disease kills 659,000 people a year in the US alone (https://www.cdc.gov/heartdisease/facts.htm https://www.cdc.gov/heartdisease/facts.htm), but for some reason we're not having COVID-level panic about it. I think you answered this yourself: > Of course, heart disease isn't contagious If heart disease were contagious and could be effectively curtailed by wearing masks and getting a vaccine, I think you'd see a similar reaction to it that you're seeing to covid.
- conception 5y ago
  Heart disease is not collapsing the health system. Why are we bothering to compare them.

ummonk 5y ago

Delta had equal or higher severity per infection than alpha which in turn had higher severity than the original variant. It just had lower mortality than the first wave because people had higher preexisting immunity, treatment had improved, and some of the most vulnerable had already been culled from the herd. You have to compare between two variants at the same time, not against previous waves. Omicron is the first major variant to actually be less severe on this metric.

nradov 5y ago

Freedom is seldom given. It usually has to be taken.