| RolStoppable said: 1. In a good year of living with the virus, 80% of the known infections have resulted in no or only mild symptoms. 15% have been cases where the infected had to stay at home to recover from the symptoms. It's only the remaining 5% who had to seek medical care of which a portion has been hospitalized and an even smaller fraction had to put in intensive care. |
5% hospitalisation rate is actually pretty high for an illness, and the thing is very infectuous, so reaches a lot of people. Thing is, our health system is optimized for the health issues arising in *normal* times. Meaning, additional capacity is usually removed, as it costs money and is not normally needed. COVID now increases the load on the system, bringing it to it's limit or beyond. That's why the thread as mentions of patients waiting for hours or are outright rejected by hospitals.
There is another thing: as doctors and nurses usually feel obligated to help the people in danger, the increased load on the system leads to them doing a lot of overtime. Because they decide to add another 5 hours to their already 10 hours long shift or to help their colleagues with all the patients. This has effects long term. In Germany in April was a study released, that showed that about a third of nurses are considering to change their job, mostly because of the pressure COVID has created. Simply put: the health professionals are so overworked, they don't feel like they are able to go on.
| RolStoppable said: 2. Of the people who died of COVID-19, it's important to point out that in almost all cases they didn't die of COVID-19 alone. Rather it is more probable that they died because of a combination of multiple things, including previous known problems with their heart or lungs, or obesity. These previous diseases and illnesses are usually caused by unhealthy lifestyles, such as smoking, too much alcohol and/or intake of processed foods. So if there was actual concern about people, then the solution to COVID-19 and its variants would not be vaccination, but preventive measures to keep people healthier overall. This means that governments should have clamped down on holes in the laws concerning food processing, but I am not aware of any country taking any steps like that. |
Thing is: comorbidities are a factor in basically all big epedemics. For the spanish flu it was starvation as a result of World War I, for Cholera epidemics the access to clear water has a tremendous effect on survivability. And in general: a healthy young body is much more able to withstand an infection than an old body with Diabetes or smoking. We all know that. Even before COVID, we knew that overweight, smoking or diabetes reduces your life expectancy. Usually not because these things killed you directly, but because they made you more suspectible to other illnesses. So what you say about COVID is also true for flu or other illnesses.
So I agree, governments should strive for fighting other health issues, but COVID does exactly nothing to change that. It is simply an illness that poses a danger to everyone, but as usual the most vulnerable are hit the most and first.
