That's not fair, Mac. Nobody thinks it's literally "just the flu". The only comparisons drawn between the two (by me, at least) is that they both present the same symptoms, both can be mild or severe, both affect certain groups of people more than others, and both can be deadly. This one is perhaps deadly in its own bastardized way, but it's no more or less deadly than the flu when 'specific demographics' are exposed to it - or h1n1 - or any other of the long line of coronaviruses that have preceded it. If I'm honest though, I don't think you're giving influenza its just due. 291,000 to 646,000 deaths worldwide; 12,000 to 61,000 deaths in the U.S. per year isn't something that warrants a "just" qualifier. Bring the flu into a nursing home or CCU and see what havoc it wreaks. Hell, it still kills children.
So look. If Covid-19 eats you up in a new or different (albeit horrible) way, then that's just its worst case scenario. Am I being any less informative if I say that you can end up with a slight fever, a cough, and then a week or so later be good to go again? Because you can. Or is my opinion on this valid only if I become terrified and pay attention to only the worst case scenarios while ignoring what's being done to develop yet another vaccine for this (yet another) new virus? I just choose, while being informed, what I'm being fed. And hysteria isn't on my menu. I can be smart about this and not succumb to fear and paranoia. It's a choice.
Unfortunately, I keep reading and hearing from folks who do literally think this is "just another flu" and it's a hoax and they don't understand why Trump is going along with this. I'm not inferring anyone here feels that way, although I do think some are significantly underestimating this.
Couple things. I live in Florida where assholes are STILL congregating at apartment pools and at various churches and MALLS. Holy fuck... I mean, I can't even with these people.
Also, my daughter died of acute interstitial pneumonia in what the Chief Coroner of LA County said was the worst case of infant pneumonia he'd seen in his 30+ years of practice. I'm intimately familiar with how pneumonia affects children. I've also been hospitalized with pneumonia multiple times and nearly died twice, the one incident was so bad that the Dr told me that I should have died before I got to the hospital and they were surprised I lived once I'd started to recover. None of this knowledge was acquired easily and I'd be perfectly happy to go back and have none of it.
What I mean by that is NOT to be confrontational, but rather to make clear that this is not panic... this is INFORMED information aggregation.
I've spent enough time on stuff like this that at the very least, I KNOW the voices I need to pay attention to and those voices have been screaming themselves hoarse trying to sound the alarm.
The flu is a motherfucker and this is NOT the flu. It's significantly more contagious, patients can go from bad to critical MUCH faster than any influenza variant and unlike all, but the worst of pneumonias resulting from the flu, the damage from this tends to be permanent as the very treatment, ventilators on max pressure, compound the problem of inflamed alveoli causing them to burst. That's permanent lung damage.
I think it's possible to understand the real scope of this AND function. I don't think it's a binary situation where one has to revert to "well, I take what precautions I can and that's it, so why worry beyond that". Your opinion is as valid as any other opinion. I would never say otherwise.
At the same time, we must elevate fact and science over opinion. When the facts and science are pointing to a crisis, it isn't paranoia or hysteria to use those facts and that science to make sound decisions. I wholeheartedly agree that hoarding toilet paper isn't sound decision making.
It is true that MOST people who get this won't have issues, especially if they are young and healthy. And, at the same time, we've only seen the beginning of this. And even if the mortality rate falls to 1%, based on community spread that's 1M people dying in just the US.
China had a brutal quarantine. Italy has surpassed China in deaths due to lackadaisical initial response. Germany is way behind in this curve and they're still not quarantining to stop the spread before it starts. US is not and may not be able to quarantine in place for the month it seems to take to get new cases to zero.
My point in all this is to inform myself and to do my best to inform others from my direct family to my extended families (like ROD). Forewarned is forearmed. As the pattern guy, I see these patterns. They tend to be very real and not so much A Beautiful Mind.
With something like this, it's far better to err on the side of caution. For those that are, this isn't really meant for you. For those underestimating this threat, I can only ask them to reevaluate.
I'll use this thread as an example. The severity was KNOWN months ago, although we couldn't know the true R naught value to understand how quickly this would spread. The Dr in China who raised the alarm died of the disease.
I really am not panicking or trying to induce panic. Rather, my only goal in this convo is to emphasize exactly how serious this is so that people can be as mindful as their situation allows and act prudently to safeguard themselves, their families and their communities.
I love you all and want everyone to come out of this on the other side so that we can turn to more important things... like injecting some positive into the Game Day Threads...
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