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A comment on Coronavirus patients start to overwhelm US hospitals. Parent comment

Re:Coronavirus patients start to overwhelm US hospitals by lordnacho on Thursday March 26, 2020 @11:12AM (#22694293)
Flu is so common that people don't realise simple things like washing your hands and getting the shot would reduce the cost massively.

With Covid19 we can all see the cost, upfront and at the same time.

I'm wondering if we could actually kill the flu by sitting still for a bit. Say we stopped the world, which apparently is a possibility now. Would that get rid of it? And if it would, would it be worth it?

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Re:Coronavirus patients start to overwhelm US hospitals by breuleux on Thursday March 26, 2020 @11:42AM (#22694654)
I'm no epidemiologist, but I doubt it. It just takes one infected person at the end of the global quarantine to get the ball rolling again.

More importantly, though, the flu (just like SARS-CoV-2) is zoonotic, meaning that it can jump from animals to humans. Even if every human was flu-free, influenza type A still lives on in birds for example, and there's an everpresent risk of it jumping to human beings.

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Re:Coronavirus patients start to overwhelm US hospitals by seymore_12 on Thursday March 26, 2020 @12:16PM (#22695084)
“All of humanity's problems stem from man's inability to sit quietly in a room alone.”

― Blaise Pascal, Pensées

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Re:Coronavirus patients start to overwhelm US hospitals by wool_gather on Thursday March 26, 2020 @11:22AM (#22694407)
Interesting thought. My understanding is rather that the converse is true: we're headed for a world where both flu and SARS-CoV-2 are endemic.
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