D&D and the rising pandemic

[Hussar]

And, the thing is, comparatively speaking, covid isn't a terribly lethal disease. Wait, wait, stop typing, I'm not saying it's GOOD. But, it's not exactly ebola is it? The overwhelming majority of people who catch Covid, do recover. Something like what, about 97, 98%? And, most of the deaths are among older people, where covid looks like pneumonia. I mean, not to be glib, but, when an 87 year old patient dies of a lung infection, it's not like they're sending in forensic teams to determine cause of death.

What I'm saying is, that yeah, it's entirely possible this disease has been hanging out in the wings. It wasn't until it really hit, in Wuhan, China, that people finally took notice of it.

 

[ad_hoc]

It looks like Americans are going to learn about exponential growth.

Florida:

Thursday: 5004
Friday: 8942
Saturday: 9585
Sunday (Today): 10 682

That is alarmingly fast.

 

[darjr]

So many don’t get that exponential growth thing.

 

[Theo R Cwithin]

It’s possible that COVID-19 has been hiding among the death statistics of supposed flu victims, certain organ failure and stroke victims...not to mention all those who were asymptomatic or had mild symptoms that could be passed off as a “seasonal crud”.

But even if it was "hiding" at some low level before, there's been a clear year-on-year death excess in 2020, iirc. So there must have been some significant change with respect to the virus' lethality or contagiousness or something.

Man... this epidemiology stuff is hard!

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

And, the thing is, comparatively speaking, covid isn't a terribly lethal disease. Wait, wait, stop typing, I'm not saying it's GOOD. But, it's not exactly ebola is it? The overwhelming majority of people who catch Covid, do recover. Something like what, about 97, 98%? And, most of the deaths are among older people, where covid looks like pneumonia. I mean, not to be glib, but, when an 87 year old patient dies of a lung infection, it's not like they're sending in forensic teams to determine cause of death.

What I'm saying is, that yeah, it's entirely possible this disease has been hanging out in the wings. It wasn't until it really hit, in Wuhan, China, that people finally took notice of it.

Yeah, too many “hoaxers” are focused on the lethality of Covid-19, and that doesn’t seem to be its thing. It only kios something like 1-5% of those it infects.

Problem is, it looks like it’s a crippler. It wrecks a sizable number of its victims to the point of needing months to recover...assuming the damage isn’t permanent.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

But even if it was "hiding" at some low level before, there's been a clear year-on-year death excess in 2020, iirc. So there must have been some significant change with respect to the virus' lethality or contagiousness or something.

Man... this epidemiology stuff is hard!

My GUESS is either there was some recent mutation that gave it some extra horsepower or we’d been lucky up until 2019 and it hadn’t hit a big pocket of truly vulnerable people.

 

[Umbran]

And, the thing is, comparatively speaking, covid isn't a terribly lethal disease. Wait, wait, stop typing, I'm not saying it's GOOD. But, it's not exactly ebola is it?

So, you have to be very, very careful about what you think of when you say "lethal disease".

In West Africa, over from 2014 to 2016, there were more than 28,600 cases and 11,325 deaths. If you caught it, your survival was pretty much a coin flip.

However, in the US alone, from January through June, covid-19 has killed 127,000 . In a quarter of the time, Covid-19 has killed over ten times as many people, and it is nowhere near burned out yet. By the measure of how many killed per unit time, covid-19 has been FORTY TIMES worse than that ebola outbreak.

Ebola is more lethal per case, so much so that it is self-limiting. Covid-19 will kill more people in your population more quickly, precisely because it isn't as lethal in each case.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

I think Hussar was thinking of case lethality, as most do.

It’s counterintuitive to think of a pathogen with a survival rate of 95%+ as being “dangerous”. It isn’t in the colloquial sense, and that feeds the whole “it’s just the flu” narrative.

I forget who did the research, but one of the reasons why military units around the world are using smaller, less intrinsically lethal rounds than in the early days of firearms is that if you kill a soldier, you remove 1 enemy from the battlefield. But if you WOUND a soldier, you remove him and all of the soldiers trying to get him to safety.

Covid is like that. It wounds and maims without killing, thereby allowing it to deal more damage to society than those other diseases we instinctively fear.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

Here in Texas, we’re getting more examples of how to/how not to lead in a pandemic.

I attend a Catholic Church with a congregation bigger than most so-called megachurches. We break up services over 2 days to serve them all, instead of having huge numbers praying together. And we just officially canceled choir practice and service participation until December at the very least. This was done because numerous choir practice sessions across the USA have been linked to large outbreaks. We didn’t want to add to that.

Meanwhile, VP Mike Pence visited Robert Jeffress’ First Baptist Church today. While Pence was masked- a rarity- FBC’s full 100+ member choir performed standing shoulder to shoulder and maskless.

As COVID-19 surges in Texas, Pence attends an indoor megachurch service in Dallas

Bars are closed again, but Lone Star State churches have no occupancy limits.

www.motherjones.com

 

[CleverNickName]

You can't really fault Americans for not understanding things like probability, statistics, and exponents. We have been actively dismantling our public education system for generations. :-/