This is my attempt at trying to understand why this is really happening. After 2 1/2 weeks of this COVID-19 being around in the Seattle area, it still does not make any sense to me. I had to set that aside a few weeks ago because so much was happening so fast that I had to just give into the what I think is misguided actions – to survive.
I must be missing something but none-the-less, the response is happening all over the world.
What I still don’t understand:
- Why did this not happen during H1N1?
- If 80% of the people have really mild symptoms and recover quickly, why the pandemonium?
- The numbers are way off. We have hardly tested at all. S. Korea supposedly has a way lower death rate because they have tested faster and better. Our numbers are going to change drastically when we get more testing done
- How many get the virus and recover?
- How many get exposed to the virus and don’t get sick?
- Yes people are going to die from this but they are dying from the current flu and always have. We do have treatment for that and vaccines yet people die all the time from the regular flu–why are we not doing this with the flu?
- Is all that is happening now the shutting down of everything and the crashing of our financial system worth it? More will become homeless. Many won’t be able to retire because of the hit that was just taken on everyone’s investments. Businesses will be closing. Unemployment will skyrocket. Is it just the system resetting itself?
On Wed. (03/11/2020) I did come across this website – www.flatteningthecurve.com that finally explained part of it.
In the USA, our health care capacity is under 1 million staffed beds; this is not adequate to accommodate the number of hospitalizations we are expected to see (4-8 million). Johns Hopkins University did a 3-year global survey of pandemic preparedness. Although the USA ranked at the top of the countries, even the US only scored a 42 out of 100. We simply don’t have the equipment, training, or messaging in place and we need to ramp up fast. No one does. That is why your choices today matter so much.
Are people being put on ventilators actually coming off of them? I was just talking to my neighbor who used to work with people on ventilators saying that most do not come off of them.
Also this post is going around the internet with the potential numbers
So the reason that EVERYTHING in the US and the World is being shut down and sent into financial ruin is because we don’t have enough beds for everyone? How will we recover from that?
How many are dying from the regular flu?
Infections
COVID-19: Approximately 102,472 cases worldwide; 340 cases in the U.S. as of Mar. 7, 2020.
Flu: Estimated 1 billion cases worldwide; 9.3 million to 45 million cases in the U.S. per year.Deaths
COVID-19: Approximately 3,491 deaths reported worldwide; 14 deaths in the U.S., as of Mar. 7, 2020.
Flu: 291,000 to 646,000 deaths worldwide; 12,000 to 61,000 deaths in the U.S. per year.https://www.cdc.gov/flu/weekly/index.htm
Other arguments
So we don’t have a vaccine… so what? The regular flu vaccine we get is never 100% effective.
We just got 1 trillion dollars put into the stock market…why can’t it go to getting more respirators or to bolster hospitals?