Unfortunately there is a huge faction of people who seek to selectively represent facts to promulgate the narrative that SARS-CoV-2 is unusually dangerous, which as far as I can tell is just completely false.
SARS-2 is a great spreader and a very poor killer. Those interested in learning about hoe it spreads might find some of the research findings around interferon-mediated early course immunosuppression interesting. IMO it is a plausible mechanism for why SARS-2 exhibits PRE-symptomatic spread (not asymptomatic).
BTW the above (great spreader, with outcomes overwhelmingly positive) is precisely why I think SARS-2 was the worst possible candidate to respond to with a “lockdown”. It really saddens me to see destructive and unethical measures paraded as “common sense”, when they’re anything but. [/rant]
The problem I have with these statement is the lack of context. Does the additional risk of stroke in COVID patients meaningfully impact the overall risk profile? If an elderly person has say a X% chance of death from COVID, and a 0.00X% of stroke, news reporting on this for public consumption is just fear mongering.
It's worth pointing out that it's killed more people than all natural disasters and terrorist attacks in the US combined. So if COVID-19 is a poor killer, so were Osama bin Laden and Hurricane Katrina.
And that's with the lockdowns. Without them, we'd probably be at half a million deaths by now. The lockdowns also bought us time to develop more effective treatment strategies.
The reality is that it is in fact dangerous. People try to point to the idea that it only kills a low percent of the population and not putting into perspective that a disease killing around 1% or so of all humans would be a rather big deal.
Your entire post contains many unsubstantiated beliefs:
- Nobody is arguing the death rate is 1% anymore, that number is far, far too high. Apparent IFRs have been constantly falling and even the CDC - quite incentivised to support panic given their actions so far - now say it's around the level of seasonal flu.
- The idea that the virus would infect 100% of all humans alive isn't based on any actual real disease. No disease ever known has infected literally everyone on the planet.
There is huge amounts of data showing the virus isn't dangerous. People aren't "trying to spread a narrative". They're pointing out the real data on things like excess deaths, or the huge number who show mild symptoms.
Every year, about 1% of the population in the US dies. The median age of COVID deaths is above life expectancy. If you are elderly, death from pneumonia is quite likely even without COVID.
For a middle aged person, ordinary Influenza is statistically more dangerous than COVID. For a child, Influenza is vastly more dangerous. Efficacy of Influenza vaccination varies seasonally and averages around 50%.
Furthermore, COVID death rates are going down across the board, even while cases are rising.
People using the "they were going to die anyway" argument need to explain why they didn't die last year, or next year, but died this year, and died in huge numbers. Excess mortality is pretty high.
Research tells us people are dying more than 10 years early.
https://wellcomeopenresearch.org/articles/5-75
> Results: Using the standard WHO life tables, YLL per COVID-19 death was 14 for men and 12 for women. After adjustment for number and type of LTCs, the mean YLL was slightly lower, but remained high (13 and 11 years for men and women, respectively). The number and type of LTCs led to wide variability in the estimated YLL at a given age (e.g. at ≥80 years, YLL was >10 years for people with 0 LTCs, and <3 years for people with ≥6).
> Conclusions: Deaths from COVID-19 represent a substantial burden in terms of per-person YLL, more than a decade, even after adjusting for the typical number and type of LTCs found in people dying of COVID-19. The extent of multimorbidity heavily influences the estimated YLL at a given age. More comprehensive and standardised collection of data on LTCs is needed to better understand and quantify the global burden of COVID-19 and to guide policy-making and interventions.
That's not the argument I am making. A lot of older people indeed died sooner than they otherwise would have. COVID is statistically more dangerous to them than Influenza, but also COVID spreads more rapidly than Influenza in a population with zero immunity.
> Research tells us people are dying more than 10 years early.
This is significantly lower than the 2009 H1N1 pandemic, which averaged above 20 YLL per case:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3792731/
This underlines my point that for younger age groups, COVID is statistically less dangerous than Influenza.
Again, the question is not whether COVID is dangerous. It certainly is. The question is, how dangerous?
That just happens to be close to the years lost per 100k.
Cigarette smoking products suppress anti-viral effects of Type I interferon via phosphorylation-dependent downregulation of its receptor - https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2567056/
Lots of non-smoking methods of getting nicotine that may not help.
And lots of ways of breathing in smoke that don’t involve nicotine.
What is wrong with you? There is no evidence in your post to justify anything you say, you are either wishing things away or actively spreading FUD.
Flu: https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/observations/comparing-...
"The 25,000 to 69,000 numbers that Trump cited [as influenza deaths] do not represent counted flu deaths per year; they are estimates [...] In the last six flu seasons, the CDC’s reported number of actual confirmed flu deaths—that is, counting flu deaths the way we are currently counting deaths from the coronavirus—has ranged from 3,448 to 15,620, which far lower than the numbers commonly repeated by public officials and even public health experts."
> SARS-2 is a great spreader and a very poor killer
And actual mortality figures https://coronavirus.jhu.edu/data/mortality
> with outcomes overwhelmingly positive
Why the hell are you posting this? Your disinformation may contribute to people dying, are you ok with that? I'm all for contrarian views if they are backed up with evidence - so produce some.
2015-2016
Flu: 7,961
Pneumonia: 131,858
All: 1,769,940
> Excess deaths are all that really matters. Why not talk about those instead?
Good point, but I don't have them. What my and your posts seem to show is that flu is a heck of a lot less mortal than this covid. Which is the point.
What really matters is excess deaths.
https://aspe.hhs.gov/cdc-%E2%80%94-influenza-deaths-request-...
(Table 1, down to 71) https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nvss/vsrr/covid19/index.htm
We maxed out at 140% between 4/11 and 4/18/2020. One could try correlating that with the lockdowns.
Anyway, I don't buy your reason for pneu & flu being on the same page, flu may be a subtype of pneumonia but there are many causes of pneumonia, and I don't expect flus to blow up into pneu. Then again, I'm just guessing.
Your second link is not official government statement - indeed it was so weird I didn't understand what I was reading at first - it's a letter expressing a person's opinion, not a government position. I don't know it's value.
The table's interesting, but the percentage of expected deaths don't make sense (read: I don't understand them). It may be down to time lag on reporting, but it's a big lag.
Anyway, well done for providing figures!
So vulnerable people dying should not contribute to covid mortality statistics? Why is that?
So it's more of a thing to keep in mind when comparing mortality statistics of an in progress pandemic to past pandemics.
https://www.percentagecal.com/answer/133-is-what-percent-of-...
https://www.scmp.com/news/world/europe/article/3091949/coron...
And a Nature article with more information: https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-020-01403-8
Obviously it is too soon to tell, but this may be more of the same. It is concerning because we expect a large number of people to be exposed to this virus. Even a small chance of long term damage ends up with a lot of cases with the numbers we are expecting.
Additionally, it may change the calculus of so called herd immunity strategies. Though it is a little late for that.