The Coronavirus Isn't Going Away – Interview with Harvard Epidemiologist

https://www.stitcher.com/podcast/deep-background-with-noah-feldman/e/67663436

by ronyeh • 6 years ago

33 15 6 years ago

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nickgrosvenor• 6 years ago

So sketchy! As they say in this podcast, hard to wrap your head around

mcv• 6 years ago

With a 2% death rate, 40-70% of the world population is huge. That would mean 80 million dead I think.

I really do hope we can stop it or slow it down enough to find a cure. On the other hand, the world has been through worse: the 14th century Black Plague famously killed a third of the population of Europe. I hope we won't get something like that again, but if we do, it's still not going to be the end of the world. It'll suck, but we'll recover.

jbotz• 6 years ago

Except that it is doubtful that it actually has a 2% death rate. Some huge number of coronavirus infections are not being counted because they are asymptomatic or presenting minimal symptoms[1], and thus those people aren't being tested. In fact, probably even a lot of people with fairly serious symptoms aren't being tested[2]. Only those being tested can test positive and only those testing positive are getting counted, inflating the presumed mortality rate massively. On top of that it seems the tests being used may be giving a lot of false negatives, for example in people who have "recovered" and test negative but then later test positive again, so they may have still been infectious all along.

Bottom line; when you really look at all the facts, it seems that perhaps Covid-19 is no more lethal than any more severe flu.

[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/27/world/asia/coronavirus-tr...

[2] https://www.reddit.com/r/nyc/comments/fayko1/my_covid19_stor...

ShorsHammer• 6 years ago

This is something I always find strange when people make these basic extrapolations with insane numbers for deaths.

Someone who never presents to hospital or gets tested can very much be infected and would never get counted in this estimated mortality rate.

Our flu numbers aren't the same. Epidemiologists estimate infection rates. They don't test 700 million people a year to see if they have the flu.

Flu is still a far bigger health concern but virtually everyone shrugs it off as a fact of life.

thorin• 6 years ago

That seems correct. When swine flu was in the UK (around 2010), I had really bad flu. I went to the doctor for blood tests etc. I recovered in around a week without intervention but was weak for quite a while afterwards. In the end I seem to remember them saying that I probably had swine flu but there was not point testing now, so I wouldn't have been included in the statistics.

fredgrott• 6 years ago

Think of this way,,,

AIDs while changes genetics fast evading immune system its hard to catch and takes decades to show up. It took us 35 years to come up with a vaccine and that was due to our degree of knowledge of the immune system works at the time.

Now, we have something easier to catch than the flu that requires hospitalization to treat. Or in short words, myopic Trump is wrong; pushing for a World-Wide vaccination effort funded by the US is not only securing USa but securing the world.

This is the first case where we will have to pull together to vaccinate 7 billion people. Its not optional.

Any idea how many tons of steel to get 7 Billion new needles? It might be 5 million tons. That is about 5% US production or about less than 2% China production. But, the real costs is not in the needles. Its the logistic costs of trained medical personnel to deliver the vaccine.

gentaro• 6 years ago

Well, 5 million / 7 billion is 0.000714, or 714 grams. I doubt it takes anywhere near that much to make a needle.

n0rbwah• 6 years ago

AIDs while changes genetics fast evading immune system its hard to catch and takes decades to show up. It took us 35 years to come up with a vaccine and that was due to our degree of knowledge of the immune system works at the time.

There's an AIDs vaccine?

seattle_spring• 6 years ago

I wouldn't be surprised if billions of new needles are manufactured every day.

thatguy0900• 6 years ago

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2011/jul/11/cia-fake-vacci... There's gonna be a lot of people refusing to get a vaccination, I suspect

flarg• 6 years ago

We literally need to rethink our blase attitude to public infection control. Self isolation for cold and flu like symptoms should be mandatory.

The Coronavirus Isn't Going Away – Interview with Harvard Epidemiologist

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