Coronavirus (COVID-19) Discussion Thread

[vivster]

JRPGfan said:

vivster said:

We wouldn't have an overwhelmed health system if this sickness was treated like every other sickness, i.e. we treat the symptoms and don't bind all of our resources to process light cases with the gravity as if it was aids. Just kidding, we don't even treat aids as aggressively as we treat this thing. The resources would be just fine if we ramped up production slightly while calming the public so that they won't steal all the stuff medical personnel needs.

The virus can be handled just fine. The people panicking about it can't and that's where we run into issues. And that's where people like you come in. If you were actually concerned you would demand the exact same treatment and tests of people for every single flu season because it does the same thing. It kills people just because humans don't take it seriously. Where was your concern last year? And where will your concern be once this epidemic is over? Because news flash: people will still be dying of preventable diseases after this is over and you won't give a single shit because newspapers will have stopped telling you so.

Do you not understand why they are attempting to slow the rate at which it spreads?

The problem is if you dont attempt to slow its spread, then you risk a massive quick "spike" of people all contracting it at once.
When that happends, the 15-20% that need to stay in a hospital, overwhelms the staff/rooms/respirators available, ect.

If that happends (too many get sick, all at once), doctors run into situtaions where they have to "pick and choose" who lives and who dies.

"I know this person dies, if he doesnt get a respirator, to help him breathe.
However, we dont have one... or we only have 1 left, but theres 300 others here that all need it." - possible doctor in future.

Thats when the "fun" starts, and deathrates sky rocket.
Doctors get traumas over basically killing patients and get suicidal ect.

The whole system can colapse if its enough of a clusterf***.


This is why they arnt trying to "kill off" the spread, but slow it down, so that the treatment capabilities of the hospitals can follow.
They want as many people that get this virus to survive it.  That happends only if you can keep its spread rate low.

edit:

"The virus can be handled just fine. The people panicking about it can't and that's where we run into issues. And that's where people like you come in. If you were actually concerned you would demand the exact same treatment and tests of people for every single flu season because it does the same thing. It kills people just because humans don't take it seriously. Where was your concern last year? And where will your concern be once this epidemic is over? Because news flash: people will still be dying of preventable diseases after this is over and you won't give a single shit because newspapers will have stopped telling you so." - Vivster

Your compairing it with a normal flu.... and ignoreing that it kills like 40 times more than a normal flu does.
With that, comes a much higher % of people that need to be hospitalised (really sick).

"the virus can be handled just fine"

Expect it cant, no country could afford to have that many people hospitalised.
No country spends that much on healthcare, or has that many doctors/rooms+beds, and respirators.

Unless your "handled just fine", means letting tons and tons of people die for no good reason.

I'm not against containment measures. It's perfectly fine to try to stop the spread. What's not fine is wasting energy and resources on light cases and then complain about an overwhelmed healthcare system. With the panic that is going around I can't even be sure that only the most severe cases are hospitalized, because considering the still low number of cases world wide it seems that many people are way overtreated. I wonder how many people are hospitalized that only display symptoms of a regular flu.

I don't really give a flying fuck about the currently reported numbers because it is just common sense that the numbers of cases is in reality much much higher. So how deadly this virus actually is won't even be apparent after most of it is over because the majority of cases remain undetected. Why do they remain undetected? Because as the virus has shown it is particularly weak and most people who have it will never be diagnosed because they never had symptoms. Just look at Italy who tests people postmortem and if they had the virus in their body they're being treated as another victim, no matter if death was actually caused by it. Saying that this strain of virus is 40 times more deadly than the flu is in the best case ignorant and in the worst case dangerous. For all we know it might actually be weaker than the flu.

I'm not trying to marginalize dead people, I'm just seeing them in perspective to regular death rates of people. It kinda hurts to see an overreaction to this event when other health issues that cause way more deaths are being brushed aside. Yep, having 10000 dead people on your hands isn't nice, but it's next to meaningless to the other millions of people who also die from preventable accidents and diseases. It just looks exactly like millions of people mourning over the cute white girl that got hit by a bus while at the same moment thousands of african children starved to death from completely preventable hunger.

If it is possible to slow down and stop the virus even without a vaccine, why is no one doing the exact same thing with other viruses who actually have vaccines? Why is no one concerned about those millions of preventable deaths? What makes this disease so special and those dead people more important than other dead people? Must've been ok to have thousands of flu victims last year, victims that wouldn't have died if we employed the same containment and hygiene measures we do now.