I often wonder how much better off these countries would have to be in general if their immunity ln was better. I am not sure of the exact number and if this link is right or not but it says 3 million kids a year die from undernourished because they lack enough decent food for proper nutrition.
It’s always interesting to me watching what Killer becomes the one most watched. Right now it’s obviously the Sars-2 virus but that death toll is no where near 3 million and even in USA alone I think the number of deaths in car accidents is higher than the current global death combination of the virus and almost 500,000 a year die from tobacco related death and almost just as many people die from HIV/AIDS related deaths as gun homicides in America. I just imagine what it would be like
If the government placed curfews and shut down restaurants and stopped allowing stores to sell alcohol once we hit 3,000 deaths a year.
Yeah - but none of those is on the exponentially increasing edge of a bell curve like the Covid killer currently still is in most nations. [… and in fact, I would expect traffic fatalities will probably enjoy a sudden dip with all the ‘stay-at-home’ stuff currently going into effect.]
And yet I wonder if the virus will ever kill as many and if we will ever actually whine as much online and through the media and push for nations to do more about sanitization and helping to build stronger immune systems.
I’m not downplaying the virus, Im saying it’s a drop in the bucket for what’s taking peoples lives every year and yet you don’t see the fear pushing people to do very much about it.
If you walk by someone coughing right now , and I see it on the streets, everyone trips out. I literally watched three smokers actively smoking complain about someone coughing and not covering their mouth and one of them specifically mentioned he would kill himself if he caught the corona was was suffocating to death and yet he’s not giving a single concern to the second hand smoking he’s putting out there or the reality of COPD or lung cancer. I see people ready to get in fist fights over masks within the construction trade to not get the virus ( in their opinion most still think the mask helps
Them not get it as much as helps them not cough it on others) and yet I see them everyday cutting wood and fiber cement and breathing in the dust without any worry over the long term problems it’s causing them. That’s what ironic and showcases stupidity to me.
I hear you … fear is a tricky thing to balance it would seem; between healthy fear and stupid stuff motivated by irrationally disproportionate fear. And your point is well-taken, to be sure, about perspective on things that kill us.
I was (somewhat heartened?) if that isn’t too insensitive an observation to read this morning that of the 261 positive cases we know of in Kansas as of about yesterday, those are from having administered over 3671 tests in Kansas. …which helps answer a big question in my mind: how much of the recent “increase” is only an artifact of us finally starting to actually get testing done in any large way? I.e. When we finally started testing, was a high percentage of all those test results positive? Because if so, that would be really bad news in that the actual number of cases is explosively higher than any known numbers. But, at least here in Kansas, that works to just over 7% of tests came back with positive results. And if they were mainly testing only the most likely symptom-showing [or suspicious recent contact] cases, then that number seems somewhat reassuring to me. Yes - of course there are many more cases than we could know about - that’s obvious. But it still says something to know what percentage of the “suspicious cases” actually did turn out to have it after tests. I don’t know how reflective this Kansas (7%) is of wider national or international numbers, I’m sure somebody else here can fill that in. But it is a relevant number to me.
But what you’re doing actually is downplaying the virus. Not surprising – it’s hard for people to grasp the reality of exponential growth. In the absence of any effective public health measures (lockdowns, travel restrictions and such), the outbreak will only fade when something like two thirds of the population has been infected and acquired immunity. From what we know at present, about half of infections have no symptoms. Of the others, 4% or so (probably varying quite a bit with population) will become critically ill and likely die without medical care – but there will effectively be no medical care if that many people are sick.
So without all of this overreaction, something like 1%-1.5% of the entire population will die. Everywhere. That would be 4 million in the US, a hundred times as many as die in auto accidents, twenty times as many as die from lung cancer, ten times as many as die worldwide from malaria every year.
Public health officials and governments around the world are not taking extreme measures because they’re stupid or panicky. This is a massive public health crisis.
Actually it’s not. My statements had nothing to do with downplaying the virus but pointing out the ridiculous of people who are routinely doing stuff that is definitely going to kill them and end their life short for no reason and yet they freak out over a virus.
That’s not related to me not being worried about the virus. That’s a completely different thing. By me pointing out how ridiculous the fear mongering is within some people who routinely do other things , such as a smoking construction worker who never wears a mask while cutting concrete 8 hours a day and 5-6 days a week, is not downplaying anything.
It’s also not downplaying anything by pointing out that imagine if people took more action to stop things that are going to kill way more than this virus will. Governors are shutting down bars to prevent deaths from spreading from a virus that is not even going to kill 50,000 people worldwide most likely but we can’t come up with better ways to stop drinking and driving and texting and driving?
Prisons are release of inmates for what they consider low level crimes now when just a few months ago they were arresting 20 year olds for behaving someone 21 buy cigarettes.
Or by pointing out how christian forums and chat rooms are filled with multiple segments on the corona virus and and how this virus is affecting the poorest people and so on and manufacturing companies are spending thousands to change it up a bit to make masks, or come out with cheap respirators and or breathing machines and so on but you almost won’t ever find posts about the 3,000,000 kids who died last year form lack of nutrition and when a major theme of how this virus spread goes back to the fact it seems to have been given favorable conditions by wilderness constantly being cut into by urbanization making wildlife have to group up in smaller spaces or find a way to survive in civilization and so on.
What I am downplaying is the actual care that the majority of people seem to express the majority of time with things that are going to kill significantly more people not only this year alone, but well after this virus is forgotten and is replaced by the next big thing to get air time.
Did you not read my reply, or did you simply ignore what it said? Unless governments do a great deal more than shut down bars, this virus will kill far more than 50,000 people – probably a thousand times that. When you say what you just said here, downplaying the threat is exactly what you’re doing.
I did read it. And it’s completely irrelevant to what i said. Are you reading or just ignoring my statements?
What do you think my post was about?
Is my post about downplaying the virus or is my post about how people are already downplaying millions of deaths a year? Is my post about we are taking to much action with how we are handling the virus or that we take very little action in comparison to work on other problems as individuals and as countries and as civilization as whole?
I get it. You’re stuck in this rut that my post is about the corona virus. It’s not. It’s so clearly not. The posts are clearly about how people freak out about one thing, such as the corona virus since that’s what is all over the news atm, and then the same people and organizations do next to nothing about other things that are killing way more.
Pretend instead of the corona virus it was people are worried about vaccinating their kids but then they do these dozens of other things that kill just as many or more.
Or let’s say it’s the bird flu and when the bird flu is around people go into this crazy spree of hand sanitizers , toilet paper, and not hanging out with others in groups of blah blah because they don’t want to die so they sit at home and smoke or eat lots of fat sugary food.
Or what about the ridiculous KY2?
You have tons and tons of people flooding Walmart and other places and trying to get credit cards to buy tons of batteries and canned foods and so on scared that the world is about to shut down over a computer being confused and they are trying to do whet the can out of a delusional fear to make sure their families are safe but as soon as it passes, and way before it even became a thing, those same people live check to check and don’t even try to save money. They will spend $50 a week on fast food and blockbuster ( back in the day ) but want even try to put $25 into a savings account all year.
Or you had millions of people tripping out and movies coming out and tons of people
Scared over some ridiculous Mayan 2012 serpent alien attack or whatever it was supposed to be and things like gun sales went through the roof but those same people potentially look at all the evidence for global warming and invasive plants destroying habitats and oil spills taking out thousands of miles of coast and so on and are just like ehh… the science is not clear.
So what I am talking about is how I find it ridiculous that people latch onto whatever is the popular fear on the media at the moment and as soon as it’s over they stop worrying and while it’s happening they are still doing things that will end their lives short.
Regardless how inconsistent that might make people who seem nonchalant regarding other known dangers, we should want to see them take the danger seriously. Breath in all the toxic fumes you like on a job site and you’re not going to increase the number of vectors in the population for doing the same. That makes this virus different.
What is ridiculous is to say anything to people that can be interpreted as “unless I clean up my safety in all areas, I may as well ignore safe practices where the corona virus is concerned too”.
No, make it 50,000,000 or 100,000,000. That was the implication of my post above. I think preventing 100,000,000 deaths warrants more extreme measures than preventing 1,000,000 deaths. Do you disagree?
On a world wide level for everyone? Ofcourse. But it makes no difference on what I was mentioning and how individuals are responding out of fear to one thing and ignoring a dozen other things that we have known about for decades.
So what do I think is ridiculous and what is it that I’m talking about repeatedly.
These two situations.
You have people who are getting scared and violent over masks and a virus but they still smoke cigarettes and breath in dust and smoke around their kids. It’s ridiculous on a personal level correct? It’s like a drunk driver worried about riding a bicycle on the side of the road because he may get hit.
You have people angry over not being able to work for two weeks and talking about the government failing them and workers still going to work and getting arrested and fined and they are all mad. But they never even bothered to put away 5% of their income for the last two years that would easily have them covered for the month they are out of work.
So the first thing I was talking about is how ridiculous it is for individuals to only care about a single aspect of their health and what could possibly go wrong and completely blow off everything else.
Such as a parent scared to vaccinate their kids because they are afraid their kids will get autism but they are totally relaxed and not worried about their kids getting a preventable disease or their kids getting other kids sick from it.
The second thing I mentioned was beyond the individual level. It’s amusing to me that the government shuts down buisness over the virus but then outside of basically just California they do next to nothing to prevent or encourage healthier products to build homes. There are millions of examples. Nothing I am saying is downplaying anything except for how individuals and companies and organizations and even the government treat fear.
The corona virus was mentioned in my statement solely because that’s the common most popular fear.
In three years the same people freaking out about hand sanitizer not being available to kill the corona
Virus they may get from a portable toilet will be the same people who grab a handle to the door and open it and use the restroom and then leave and won’t even think about hand sanitizer.
My statements are not some mind blowing jab at corona virus. However, I’m not going to keep explaining it. If my statements are over heads they are overheads. I feel more than confident my statements and the issues I was voicing was clear.
I agree. That’s exactly what I have been saying and nothing more.
It’s ridiculous how inconsistent people are about fears over things that will kill them… only difference is that I found no need to explain the second part because it was beyond what I was talking about. We said the same exact thing only ive had to say it four or five times and use dozens of examples and still be treated like in downplaying something about the corona virus.
Also I completely disagree with the split from the vaccine thread and my comments to here. My comments was significantly more relative to how ridiculous the fear of vaccines are vs taking the corona virus serious.
It makes a difference because you kept saying that the dozen other things we’ve known about for decades are actually worse than the virus. They’re not. Deciding how seriously to take different threats first requires having some handle on how dangerous they actually are, and your estimate was off by a good factor of thousand when it comes to this virus. Given the amount of confusion out there about this outbreak, getting things right matters.
Correct, more or less. The lifetime risk of dying from smoking is higher than the risk from this virus. (On the other hand, the risk of dying in the next year is higher for the virus.) People do indeed react more strongly to new threats. The risk of dust or second-hand smoke is a lot lower, though.
Sure, people are irrational in lots of ways.
I pointed out that some of your statements were factually incorrect and corrected them. That is all I did.
Unless you spell it out I’m afraid a quick read of what you wrote could be interpreted as equivocation that might lead some people to treat COVID-19 as casually as they do those other known dangers.
That would be rather silly on their part since everything I said was about how I think it’s stupid so many people don’t take other things serious and never mentioned once about taking anything not serious. I never said we are doing to much to prevent anything but pointed out I feel like we don’t do enough to prevent hardly anything.
No, I’m pretty sure your statements are not over anyone’s heads.
Yes, sometimes people get riled up about things in a disproportionate way because they seem more acute. I can’t stop climate change right this minute, but I can go out to the grocery store and buy toilet paper (at least, I could a few weeks ago). COVID-19 is not like Y2K. Comparing the two is apples and oranges, and not really helpful if you’re aiming to look like you’re taking it seriously.
Also, as I implied above, sometimes poverty or living paycheck to paycheck makes it a lot harder for people to take action against more chronic and pervasive things. Your statement about how people just “haven’t bothered” to put money away for a catastrophe is pretty ignorant if you think it’s as simple as all that.