Re:Scientists believed Covid leaked from Wuhan lab, but fear...
by neuronic on Wednesday January 12, 2022 @06:46AM
(#29905083)
I think this is more nuanced.
In the beginning, testing was very sparse and unavailable so it's hard to blame anyone for just looking at the obvious infections. It took a while until we even understood that the majority of cases are asymptomatic and very mild.
You might have an asysmptomatic child with a 0.003% IFR and hand them to your grandparents for caretaking, with a quite high chance of putting them into the ICU if infected. So it's not so easy to deal with like a cold.
Also, variants might change the distribution and death isn't the only negative outcome of a COVID infection. It's a systemic disease affecting all organs which will put a strain on the health systems for a long time to come, especially if it becomes endemic and people will just keep reinfecting themselves year after year. It's too shortsighted to just dismiss it as a cold just because cases are often very mild.
In the beginning, testing was very sparse and unavailable so it's hard to blame anyone for just looking at the obvious infections. It took a while until we even understood that the majority of cases are asymptomatic and very mild.
The 1% IFR is trueish across all age groups but not so much when you look at specific age groups. You can clearly see it in current German data: https://www.statista.com/statistics/1105512/coronavirus-covi...
You might have an asysmptomatic child with a 0.003% IFR and hand them to your grandparents for caretaking, with a quite high chance of putting them into the ICU if infected. So it's not so easy to deal with like a cold.
Also, variants might change the distribution and death isn't the only negative outcome of a COVID infection. It's a systemic disease affecting all organs which will put a strain on the health systems for a long time to come, especially if it becomes endemic and people will just keep reinfecting themselves year after year. It's too shortsighted to just dismiss it as a cold just because cases are often very mild.