How about some random chatter to lighten the mood?
Let’s just assume the death rate is 0.5% so we can move on to using the data…
The two schools of thought are: #1) 99.5% of people will be fine, therefore I will be fine. Don’t make any laws that affect me. #2) The US has a population of 328.2M, if 0.5% die, that is 1.64 million lives lost. That’s a lot, can we do anything to save some of them?
If you are random person posting on social media, you likely believe in #1. But if you are in government, or can imagine yourself there, you likely go to bed at night thinking #2. Selfishness starts to break down when you have the power to do something and you do nothing. That’s where a lot of governors and law makers find themselves.
And let’s not forget that 99.5% do live, but some percent of them have serious lung damage, or other permanent damage… So they don’t just go back to normal life after having it.
Survivers after hospitalization often face cognitive problems. This is old news but a recent study had to increase the number of cases since there was more time to spend on investigating follow up problems.
sounds like a good idea, i was asking about possible solutions back a few pages. Time to put on the thinking caps: in what sort of world do we want to live? How much is it worth to have a fair and open society free from this threat?
how about looking at it from another view of the situation,
let’s assume a rate that is closer to the actual reported data, basically it is 3 deaths per 100 infections.
The USA has a 2.7% fatality rate for those who are infected (219k deaths with 8M cases); this is the same as the totals for the entire world with 1M deaths from 37M cases, (ref worldometers.info).
How many will be infected—will everyone get exposed? Is that likely or even possible? And how long can this last?
Assuming it is possible, if all 328.2M people in the US get infected (the entire herd) then at the current total average rate that would be 8.8M deaths, that seems impossible and unbelievable,
but how many died during the “Spanish” Flu of 1918? (20 to 50M estimated deaths with 500M infections worldwide, one third of the world’s population at the time, 4 waves over 2 years).
Can it happen again?
btw, India (7M) will soon pass the US (8M) with the most infections with their 2x higher infection rate. But their fatalities are only half. Is it under-reported or do they have better treatment medicines?
It’s pretty well agreed that the best solutions available today are to reduce your time in public, wear a N95 when in public, and mind your grubby little hands. None of which is asking people to stop living their life.
Just like recent generations started to bathe daily and brush their teeth daily… we now need to add “masks in public”… because we have 7.8billion people, and that’s become a viral paradise.
It was a lot more peaceful for a while, but then several of the trolls came back. Oh, well.
If a virus killed 0.5% of the population, it would be horrific. Fortunately, that number rests upon the false supposition that 100% come down with the virus; in real life only about a third typically catch any given virus. Since the current death toll worldwide is only about 0.014, a total toll of less than 0.05 seems more probable than 0.5%.
I talked to a business contact who was diagnosed with Covid and was in the hospital. They were going to put her on a ventilator, but she declined. Instead she sat up in bed all night forcing herself to breathe as deeply as she could, and praying. In the morning the doctor was surprised at how much better she was doing, and eventually she returned home and recovered fully. But one very odd thing was that her hair came out by the handful for a little while during recovery. I’d never heard of such a thing before; it sounds more like a symptom of radiation poisoning (or chemotherapy?) than of a virus, doesn’t it? Seems very weird!
As I said, let’s get past the data since it really doesn’t matter what the percents are. The fact is we can save lives with little effort. It’s a small ask.
Speaking of false suppositions, you are assuming the virus will lay down and die when herd immunity is reached. But there are about 6 strains last I heard, so this won’t stop at heard-immunity% of 328.2M, so 100% is an UNDER-estimate.
Yep, it must be radiation poisoning, nothing else makes sense. Evil forces confirmed. Oh, wait, what about her low oxygen levels? Here’s how low oxygen can make your hair fall out.
I am trying to prepare myself psychologically to limit exposure to public places, maintain social distancing, wear a mask in public spaces, avoiding flying, etc., for many months to come. The reasons are simple:
1. Less than 10% of the USA population has antibodies to Covid-19 as of today. The Covid-19 virus is very contagious and spreads in larger droplets as well as aerosol suspension in the air.
2. The crude mortality rate of the Covid-19 virus is just under three percent; the infection mortality rate estimated by Johns Hopkins, the CDC, and other experts is a minimum of 0.6 percent (more than six times that of a seasonal flu virus).
3. The spread of the virus is not under control or anywhere close to that, and we are entering the colder half of the year, when less time is spent outdoors.
4. A vaccine will not be widely available to the public until, at the earliest, the summer of 2021, and possibly later.
5. It takes a minimum of 70% of the population to have antibodies to the virus to provide any reduction in the spread of infection to people who don’t have antibodies.
6. About half of the USA population is currently indicating in polls that they do not intend to take the vaccine, when it is available.
7. A large percentage of the population is now refusing to take the basic measures recommended by experts to prevent the spread of the virus, including masking in public, social distancing, etc.
8. I have an elderly father who would be in danger if I gave him the virus after flying to the state where he lives, I will soon be pressured to resume using public transportation to go to the office to work, and I am battling multiple, significant health problems.
I think we just need to accept this as the new normal. I know a guy who has kept his family under strict quarantine since this started. They don’t go anywhere, see anyone, and have everything delivered. Is he going to do this indefinitely? Because from what I know (which isn’t much), we’re nowhere near having a vaccine that is 100% tested, effective and safe.
Little effort? Tell that to the schoolteachers and school administrators around the country. Many of them are beside themselves with stress and anxiety over the immense new efforts and heavy load of new details they must cope with. And despite their best efforts and intentions, this fall season may be a virtual throwaway as far as children’s educations are concerned.
Many (not all, but plenty) of the schools are attempting to teach kids ‘virtually’ instead of in person. In my area it’s the big city schools (think inner city) that are doing this the most. To accomplish this, the teacher must try to deliver a lesson (over zoom or whatever platform) while watching 20-30 students in little boxes on her monitor to make sure they’re behaving. And it’s a debacle. They have stories to tell of kids not listening, distracted, wandering off, snacking, showing off, and so on. The teachers are practically powerless to do anything about it, because the kids aren’t there in the classroom. One teacher told of a boy who was sitting in his bedroom and listening pretty well on this particular day, until his mother barged into the room with 2-year-old brother in tow and said to the boy, “Here, watch him,” whereupon she turned the tv on in the bedroom and walked out; from then on the boy was occupied with watching the more-interesting tv show and his little brother. And these are the ones who ‘show up’ for lessons; a whole mess of kids don’t bother logging in at all! These kids are ‘absent’ so often, some of them are being dropped from classes by the district and will have to re-enroll… if the parent will get his or her act together, which may not happen until social services show up at the door. (Inner city, you know how it is?) For far too many children in the USA, educationally this will be a wasted year, and a lot of these kids might never catch up.
Me and a dozen other kids took an advanced-placement physics class offered by a college over V-tel when we were in high school. It was weird, but it worked great for our age group. We all got great grades and liked it. I sure wouldn’t expect similar results from elementary kids though. I agree for grades K-6, in-person classes are probably the best option available.
Wellp, the parents can always (and you know they will) blame the teachers, for “failing to teach my kid”.
Hey, I was once teaching adults, and I might as well have been teaching potted plants.
One woman who had no clue despite seeming to listen intently, well, I’d stop and ask her if she was okay with it, if she was getting it, to ask if she had any questions, and always got “yes, yes, yes”, like everything’s fine. Notebook, blank. Scored like 7 (out of 120, yeah, 20 “bonus points”) on the finals.
One guy was either constantly falling asleep, or had his finger buried up his nose to the 3rd knuckle (and would “examine” his find :confounded: ). Midterm exam? Signed his name, sat there like 10min, then got up and handed back a blank paper. And had the nerve to complain to the dean that I “wasn’t teaching him”. The dean audited my class, even said I was doing an excellent job.
Teacher for the “A” section was teaching marketable skills like how to click on a checkbox and turn a frowny face into a smiley face (I’m so not kidding). I was teaching my “B” section how to change text “Joe Schmo” to “Schmo, Joe”.
Teachers have a tough job no matter if it is online or in the classroom. This virtual period that was thrust upon them can’t be easy. Parents should step up and help. Unfortunately they either are both busy or are just poor parents or parent. Luckily this will be over soon.
If you are meaning there will be no more endangered people left at all? Maybe.
If you are meaning we all wil be vaccinated before end of this year and live happily ever after? No.
“In the good ol’ days”development of a vacine would take a decade, give or take a year.
Today people are working there a$$es of to produce a vaccine a.s.a.p.
They a working over-time, doing things parallel rather than in series, but they don’t skip corners.
If you define “soon” as a percentage of life expectancy, you (eg. we) will have to wait a long time.
Experienced scientists are optimistically hoping for 2021Q3 …… IF there are no bumps on the road.
The Netherlands are now experiencing a second wave. Or is it just the result of increased testing?
Death rate seems a bit lower than in the first wave. Or is it just the last bit of endangered people?
Today any reference to culture and background is labelled ethnic profiling and a big social no-no.
Yet specialists report that a larger-than-expected part of the admitted patients don’t speak Dutch.
NL must (and will) step up the information to non-Dutch speaking inhabitants.
The good news is that doctors have learned. First response is no longer intubating and ventilator.
Hydroxychloroquine no longer leads to collegue bashing. There was a small study (we’re Dutch).
Given to fresh patients who already are on oxygen, it halves the number of people ending up on IC.
And there are other options available that have shortened the average stay in IC by a week.
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The other good news (for BLF) is that I’ll refrain from posting in this thread for a few weeks.
The hourly rate (only taught 3 classes, 2 one semester and 1 the next) only covered classroom time, so making up lesson plans, making the tests, then grading the tests, and submitting final grades the way The Office demanded them (right down to the color of the ink!) was all on your own dime.
Hourly, wasn’t worth it, so I stopped.
When I was doing the 2-fer, that was in addition to a fulltime gig, so that meant leaving the house before 07:00 and sometimes not getting home ’til 21:00 or later, 4 days per week.
To this day I have no idea how I did it. Sleepwalked through that period, I guess.
