Originally Posted by
RDJ
The virus is not harmless, and the risk is certainly not to be scoffed at. That said, by itself it's about as dangerous as one of the nastier variations (for example, the 1968 Hong Kong H3N2 influenza virus which killed 4 million worldwide) of the annual ‘flu virus; and the usual flu killed 500 Kiwis in 2019. Not worth the death and disease that's going to follow, inevitably, from crashing economies and vastly increasing unemployment: unwanted job loss is associated with a 75% percent increase in the probability of death – the equivalent of adding 10 years to a person’s age
What ought to be have been made clear to us all ever since April-May is that the most at risk are those over 70 with severe pre-existing conditions - and so we should do what society has always done with epidemics down the ages because that principle hasn't changed: Quarantine (and care for) the Infected, Isolate (and support and visit ) the Vulnerable, Wash our Hands, Stay Home if Sick, and otherwise Carry On.
You've been mislead to an extent. It's true that most of the fatalities are older with other problems, and that was always made clear, but that's ot the whole story. Young fit college football players "recovered" but now have heart problems. Others listed as receovered find themselves on the waiting list for a lung transplant. While the main problem was the interstitial pneumonia, the virus attacks different people in different ways. The experts are still learning. It would be dangerous to join Trump in describing it as flu.
There is a grey blur, and a green blur. I try to stay on the grey one. - Joey Dunlop
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