Ok, this is a rant, steam have to come out sometime, it’s one of those moment
In the last weeks, and months, i debated with people, on what to do about Covid-19, how to react, i’m all about civilized discussion and the right to dissent .
But to have a civilized conversation, we must agree on some common ground, the data are at least incomplete, but they are “Real” and we must apply them in context, with some kind of logic…
Now come 2 Doctor, from a private emergency care clinic, who made a speech about “Their” data, Dan Erickson and Artin Massihi, used their own clinic data, and some public data to extrapolate death rate, and infection rate, it would be funny if some layman would have done that, but Doctors, must know about the sample bias that we have right now, testing in most part of the world, is not random, we test mostly symptomatic people, so the proportion of infected in the sample, can’t be the same as in the general population, it’s logic, not even math.
Of course, people took that, and run with it, 2 Doctor, coming with death rate WAY under the Flu (They threw 0.03% at some point) , are going to be really popular with people wanting to stop the lockdown .
The whole “not worse than the flu” rhetoric is nonsensical, we know, it’s worse than the flu, for sure, first, in the US alone, Covid-19 killed more (To this date) than the worse seasonal flu ever recorded, in a little more than half the time the flu come and go, and this is WITH the lockdown (A big difference with the seasonal flu) …. Of course, people dying are mostly over 70 years old, but if this is a factor in your reasoning, you are a heartless asshole.
Asymptomatic carrier don’t play a big role in the Flu, in the case of Covid-19 it seem to be one of his biggest weapon, people with little or no symptom can propagate Covid-19, it’s where the lockdown may have save our hospital, from a enormous wave of critical case.
We discover a lot of weird pathology that can (In a lot of case) be linked to Covid-19, neurological effect (Stroke), more case of Kawasaki syndrome, all of those linked pathology are rare, but still troubling, we see atypical case more and more.
So again, not at all like the seasonal Flu, and i must remind people, that Covid-19 did that, with some heavy social distanciation measure, unprecedented measure….
And this is the moment when they mention Sweden, who knew that neocon would EVER use Sweden as an exemple, Sweden use very mild measure of social distanciation, if you watch the “Data” it seem not that bad, until you understand things like proportion, sociological environment, public healthcare system .
Let’s get that straight, Sweden is a small country, their total population is 10 millions, their biggest city, Stockholm is not even a million, and the greater Stockholm is only 1,7 Million, with a density of 498 citizen per square kilometer, so if you are going to compare Sweden with the world, understand that it’s not really like most country (Sweden must be lovely BTW) .
And they still have a more death than the neighbouring country, who had more stringent social distanciation than Sweden, they even have more death by proportion than the US, but the comparison is not reasonable, but it’s the kind of leap the “Not worse than the Flu” crowd take ….
It’s a fact that “Lockdown”, social distancing, shelter in place, is hurting the economy, and it will have societal consequence, but we must find the middle road, we can’t really reopen like “Before”, at least not in the foreseeable future, we must find a way, to be careful not to spread the virus too fast, because if our Hospital get overwhelm, the death rate will go up abruptly, younger people die less, but they are still hospitalized a lot, and they are most likely to die, if they can’t have a respirator, a room, oxygen, it’s a fact ….
So let’s be all careful about the reopening of our economy, and don’t expect to go to a concert, sporting event this summer….
And to make matter worse, puting Guns N’ Roses, ‘Live and Let Die’ , is really inappropriate right now, i mean, really ?