Orderly dying

[scaredyclassic]

Humans in the usa are kind of like the failing banks, propped up by modern medicine in spite of overwhelmingly bad health. Which is great. Provides a lot of employment. But we shouldnt expect such a frail structure to be bombproof

Ill be wearing masks way into the future, even when no ones around. I much prefer them to sunscreen. Great coverage with a hat and cotton scarf.

[ucodegen]

[quote=scaredyclassic]Ill be wearing masks way into the future, even when no ones around. I much prefer them to sunscreen. Great coverage with a hat and cotton scarf.[/quote] Oh, you must be that person I saw walking around in black, with a black hat pulled low over the eyes and red cotton scarf….☺ kind of a old western bad guy look; almost like Lee Van Cleef.

[scaredyclassic]

Kind of. My wife says its more of a homosexual vibe.

[ucodegen]

[quote=scaredyclassic]Kind of. My wife says its more of a homosexual vibe.[/quote]
Humm… Lee Van Cleef doesn’t image out very well as homosexual… too rough in the face and around the edges. Sounds more “Brokeback”.

[scaredyclassic]

More glee than brokeback. but i also buy my t shirts from tsptr.com, purveyors of vintage repro tshirts and goods from the 60s and 70s. i love them. where else can you get a “drop acid not bombs” shirt with the grateful dead logo on it in a true vintage slim cut made of portuguese cotton? also, they are nicely made.

[phaster]

[quote=spdrun]COVID has probably killed 600,000 people in the US.

Spanish Flu killed about 675,000. With population in 1918 being 1/3 of what it is today, this would be equivalent to 2 million.

This being said, say half of those people could have been saved using modern healthcare and antibiotics — maybe Spanish Flu would have only killed a million people with modern medicine.

Also, people were MORE crowded in 1918. Cities were actually more densely populated … Manhattan had a population 1.5x that of its present population, even though there were fewer housing units (many apartment buildings were built in the 20s and 30s!). We were coming off a war, so soldiers were coming home packed into troop ships. There wasn’t as much ability to “work from home.”

So despite lack of social distancing and lack of modern medicine, Spanish Flu only killed 3x the number of people as COVID did today. And COVID is far from done with us. If COVID had emerged in 1918, I suspect it would have been as bad (or worse) than the Spanish Flu.[/quote]

one BIG difference is in 1918 a person could go from healthy to dead in 12 hours (watch the first minute or so of AMERICAN EXPERIENCE)

https://www.pbs.org/video/influenza-chapter-1-9h0khn/

also something else to consider given the literature

https://www.nih.gov/news-events/news-releases/bacterial-pneumonia-caused-most-deaths-1918-influenza-pandemic

my mom kinda started off in public health, and came to SD back in 1957 when there was another pandemic of sorts

https://www.cdc.gov/flu/pandemic-resources/1957-1958-pandemic.html

anyway I’m not an MD but growing up was made aware of various aspects of public health and have a gut feeling that covid-19 in the grand scheme of things so far hasn’t been as bad as the 1918 spanish flu

to listen to what actual exerts have to say on the topic, there is an interesting discussion/podcast of “virologists”

https://www.microbe.tv/twiv/

long story short from what I gather, the faster the whole world gets the existing vaccines the better,… this is because there is an ever present danger of virus mutations becoming more contagious/virulent

consider that in china (about a year ago) there was a paper that said the odds of someone becoming infected in a house hold where someone had covid-19 was about 20%,… I point this out because consider what happens if the virus mutation changes the odds of someone becoming infected in a house hold where someone had covid-19 mutation was about 40%

truth is we’re not anywhere near the end of a long dark tunnel simply because most of the global population isn’t going to get a vaccine by summer,… and the danger many are not considering is antibiotic-resistant strains of staph bacteria may be spreading between pigs raised in factory farms

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2021/03/210305113455.htm

[spdrun]

Wouldn’t a shorter healthy –> very sick –> dead time actually reduce the time that a person is able to spread the disease? The problem with COVID is that people can be walking around for a week with mild flulike symptoms, spreading the virus.

As far as a vaccine … even if mutations partially escape the vaccine, the vaccine may not prevent spread, but it should still reduce the severity of illness. If you can keep the 20% most vulnerable from landing in hospital, that’s 90% of the battle right there.

[phaster]

^^^

a highly deadly virus infection like ebola is a good thing in that the disease burns out faster than it is spread

thing is w/ covid 19 thus far it has targeted mostly older weaker people

looking at the literature you’ll see the spanish flu of 1918,…

[quote]
Mortality was high in people younger than 5 years old, 20-40 years old, and 65 years and older. The high mortality in healthy people, including those in the 20-40 year age group, was a unique feature of this pandemic.

https://www.cdc.gov/flu/pandemic-resources/1918-pandemic-h1n1.html
[/quote]

the danger of letting down our guard and going back to “life as normal” is the covid19 virus might mutate into something that has a high mortality rate in normally healthy people

a further complication is as I pointed out back in 1918 (Bacterial Pneumonia Caused Most Deaths)

https://www.nih.gov/news-events/news-releases/bacterial-pneumonia-caused-most-deaths-1918-influenza-pandemic

as a kid my mom drilled into me viruses cause the common cold AND antibiotics should not be taken for any viral infection including a cold, a cough, or the flu because it has no beneficial effect (actually the danger is antibiotics causes bacteria to become drug resistant)

basically what medical experts are concerned about is,… predicting exactly how the covid19 virus acts is difficult/impossible to tell,… so the prudent thing to do even w/ some of the US and first world population starting to vaccinated is for people to keep socially distanced,… this is because there is a very real danger of a secondary bacteria pneumonia effect which might make what we have all experienced thus far pretty tame

truth is (for the most part),…

[quote=scaredyclassic]Humans in the usa are kind of like the failing banks, propped up by modern medicine[/quote]

[spdrun]

COVID is likely not going away, just like OC43 (likely jumped species around 1890, aka the “Russian flu”) didn’t go away. Our bodies (those that survived) just learned to live with it. At this point, kids are exposed to OC43 early on, get a cold, and develop an immunity that protects them as more vulnerable adults. We can’t socially distance forever and imprison people behind screens forever. We’re not psychologically designed to “socially distance” — we’re social animals.

And guess what? Such mutations can happen with ANY virus. Even common-cold viruses can mutate to be lethal. The best we can do is vaccinate the vulnerable, get back to normal, and hope for the best:

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/mutant-form-of-cold-virus-can-kill/

What’s the alternative. Alter our entire society to interact in person less and subject people to psychological trauma and suffering due to loneliness and skin hunger?

[Author]

Posts