Yes, but not so much fear that you ride out your stroke or heart attack at home because you think venturing out of your house and into the ER is wading into certain death via pneumonia.
That is the level of fear that the media has induced in some people and it's even more dangerous (at the individual level) than too little fear.
Edit: Updated fatality percentage from 0.16% to 0.25%, to reflect the latest numbers.
Months after the lockdown started and the surge was successfully averted, we're still not doing cancer surgeries and diagnostics. I don't understand how this level of fear and conservatism is saving more people than it's hurting. COVID is nowhere near as dangerous as a malignant tumor.
There is a middle ground of appropriate fear that we've blown past.
There is also this assumption that people will haplessly get infected as if they were livestock. Which they are not. The will stop going up, stop spending money, avoiding work if they can. That's baked in and not something the government imposes. Except to impose order on the process. An orderly early lockdown is better than a late chaotic panicked one.
In 2018, NYC’s premature death rate was 189 per 100,000, or 0.189% of the population. In a single quarter COVID-19 has already surpassed all causes of premature death combined. And that’s before the epidemic is done, and before we’ve had a chance to re-test earlier deaths to adjust the numbers properly.
You’re not wrong that some people will die from otherwise treatable heart attacks, and that’s tragic. But to assert that more will die from staying home than not requires some pretty extraordinary evidence.
Assuming you have a heart attack, your chance of dying is 20%. Higher if you don't get treatment.
That's as high or higher than your chance of dying from covid-19 assuming you're in the highest risk group.
A conservative estimate of likelihood to catch covid if you go to a hospital at this point is 5%. In reality it's probably lower.
These end up mostly cancelling out, so if you the I the chance you're suffering from a heart attack is higher than the chance of catching covid you should go to the hospital. (And this is me still fudging the numbers to make covid look comparatively more dangerous than it really is).
People will needlessly sir if we collectively overstate tht dangers of covid. That's without a doubt true. People will also die if we understate them and don't take reasonable precautions.
Really? Where is this number form?
You're certainly at more risk in a hospital than at home, but it's not that crazy. Since it seems like you're in the bay area, consider that for the chance to even be 5%, something like most new Covid cases in the bay would need to come from hospital employees or patients. I don't think that's happening.
I imagine being in those shoes feels a lot like it would have to need surgery when you're HIV positive, back when HIV was an eventual death sentence: you'd feel guilt/shame for exposing your doctors to this coincidental problem you have, that might get them sick.
And so these people don't go, and end up dying of these other problems, likely at a much higher level than the people who are just staying indoors out of paranoia.
I had symptoms but it honestly was more like a mild flu.
So please stop your fear mongering and holier than thou attitude, just because you had it and it was bad doesn't mean that everyone will be the same. In fact serological studies prove that the overwhelming majority barely have any symptoms, and of those who do even fewer develop into a severe illness.
I'm not sure you fully understand the problem you're trying to discuss. The problem is not just about ourselves catching it. The main problem is us acting as transmission vectors to anyone and everyone around us.
You may believe you are magically enchanted to not have any lasting consequences from a covid19 infection, but I'm quite sure that you come across people who may fall within one of the risk cohorts. Thus you crossing their path might very well be a death sentence to them. But that shouldn't bother you, right?
I am not countering you but the parent. Old age itself is a pre-existing condition and then we develop more for each day we live (obesity, heart attacks, diabetes). I know the numbers of true risk may be different but can we manage 5-15% of people falling extremely sick?
If you haven’t had it you won’t understand. I can’t swim but if you’re a swimmer you might understand a parallel - it’s like not being able to swim - your head bobbing on water surface, sometimes you can breathe other times you are just gasping. If you’re in water the people will see you’re drowning and a life guard will pull you out.
Pneumonia is this “almost drowning” for weeks!and then bring barely able to breathe for months.
Again: fear is exactly the right response to pneumonia!