[Shop-talk] everybody OK with Covid-19?

[Michael Porter]

On 3/16/2020 6:06 PM, Jeff Scarbrough via Shop-talk wrote:
>
>
> On Mon, Mar 16, 2020 at 7:43 PM someone wrote:
>
>     This is no different then swine flu, bird flu, Sars, or any of the
>     other types of outbreaks we have recently had.  But this one has
>     the media waging the dog.
>
>
> I am not an epidemiologist.  But I do help to keep a high-containment 
> infectious disease lab running, so some of this has rubbed off...
>
> This is, of course, very much like SARS - they are cousins on the 
> virii family tree (Coronavirus is also called SARS-CoV-2).  It is like 
> swine flu and bird flu, in that it seems to be transmitted as an aerosol.
>
> What makes it different is that it is a novel coronavirus.  That means 
> we haven't seen it before.

I'm thinking that history doesn't repeat itself, and doesn't rhyme (as 
Mark Twain averred) so much as it coughs up the same sort of phlegm 
every once in a while for the same reasons.  It's now right around 100 
years ago that the "Spanish" flu killed an estimated 50-60 million 
worldwide, when the world population was about 35-40% of what it is 
now.  There /are/ pandemics, and some of them have rather high death 
rates.  The rate of death from the Spanish flu was about 2%.  The CDC is 
estimating a rate of death from this virus of 3%, so it's nothing to 
sneeze at.  In hard-hit regions, the death rate is around 4-5%, probably 
because in those populations, malnutrition is higher and access to care 
is less prevalent, and people are dying at a higher rate from 
opportunistic secondary infections, such as bacterial pneumonia. The 
death rate in this country each year from garden-variety influenza is 
about 0.1%, so we are dealing with something that is more virulent and 
has a much greater potential for harm, so, all in all, warnings to 
behave exceptionally because the threat is exceptional are appropriate.  
Does the media magnify the threat? Yeah, because getting eyeballs is the 
core of the business.  But, if the advice comes from reputable sources, 
best to listen to it, instead of the nitwits.


Cheers.



-- 


Michael Porter
Roswell, NM


Never let anyone drive you crazy when you know it's within walking distance....

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