Smoking deaths around 1.2mil this year so far, I wonder why no ban on smoking…
COVID Live Update: 178,168,286 Cases and 3,856,862 Deaths from the Coronavirus - Worldometer
Simple: A strong ($$$) tobacco lobby.
Indeed. Lol
Lots and lots of tax revenue
1 Like
The difference between most of those is that the statistics stay pretty stable year after year, HIV/AIDS is the only one that acted like a pandemic. With COVID-19 we don’t know the end game, where things get stable. We can just make estimates based on current numbers, and in many parts of the world the numbers are very likely more guesses than anything due to incomplete testing. Any time people are dying and no one really knows how many more there will be it gets scary.
2 Likes
Apples to oranges here. Smoking is a personal choice, so that changes the equation.
HIV is also transmitted through interactions that are intentional in most case and the contagion is so different.
Cancer is a genetic roulette with lots of environmental aspects that are out of our control.
Alcohol, again, personal choice.
Suicide is definitely a biggie that we as society need to deal with better but because the contagion of ideas is much more complex to handle, we don’t do much.
Malaria is geographically based in areas that people with little agency are affected by so we give that a pass in many cases for our own ability to handle it. But there are huge governmental and other agencies working on this.
Drugs is another issue of choice, affected by a the hard problem of poverty, but nevertheless seen as a choice.
Road accidents are again a personal choice of traveling and we have already done the equations and mitaged this socially with insurance.
The way this pandemic spreads is different and the effects are totally different. To stand by and just say that we let nature run its course goes against most of our social values, especially because it will tie up the health system in such a way that byproduct deaths are going to be severe.
These issues give good perspective, but do not excuse us from acting. Not sure what the proper response is for society, but to go on as business as usual just doesn’t seem the right thing to do. In the end we are going to have to engage and get economies going, especially when the issue of food security becomes more acute for everyone.
One thing to think of is that no business can allow itself to be responsible for the deaths of their employees. We don’t know how to solve this problem.
Whatever we do or don’t do, things are going to be different.
2 Likes
Valid points, but this thing still at this point is no worse than the flu. The only difference is the media and everyone freaking out. We had someone come to work with this thong while she was sick for 2 days, she was in contact with quite a few people, and they even sent in old custodians to “sanitize” the room; and still no one else got sick. I know lots of nurses that work in the medical center who also say they are seeing nothing really. I just think its asinine to shut the world down over the flu. Old people who are the most at risk are the ones who should be staying at home, that is if they want to live. 
That is absolutely wrong.
The flu infects an average of 1.3 ppl per infection. So if you gave it to 1.3 ppl, and they gave it to 1.3ppl ten times, that would result in 14 people getting the flu (1.3^10). This virus has a 3. One person, giving it to 3 people, which each give it to 3 ppl, ten times is 59,000 people. That is just one aspect of this virus. N/m the increases in interventions needed and the lack of any strategy to treat it. A normal flu is nothing like this novel virus.
The reason smoking isn’t keeping us all in our homes is because it doesn’t grow exponentially. It took the US a month to go from 1 death to 1,000 and 2 days to go from 1,000 to 2,000. If people don’t respect this, it will grow so fast, and be so prevalent, the US alone could have 4 million deaths in the next half year. This isn’t magic, it is basic math.
The other thing people don’t seem to get is, if we had a football game today, and 60,000 people showed up. Assume there were ten people who were really contagious that went. If you were one of those 60k, you probably wouldn’t be infected before the end of the game. But the important thing is, a few dozen people would be. Now, instead of a football game, imagine it is 60,000 people going to home depot because they think it would be a good time to repaint their spare bedroom. You aren’t likely to get sick, but if 60,000 people do it, and just a few of them are sick, a lot more people will get sick. We all have to stop taking small risks or it will keep growing and growing.
The longer people do not respect what is happening here, the harder it will be to fix it. It is affecting people of all ages, and not just the nursing homes.
Please. Stay at home.
Take it seriously. Every two weeks, the people claiming the worst have been right. People who would prefer to ignore the evidence have been terribly wrong, and it really is better to be pessimistic and wrong than optimistic and wrong. Just stay at home. Things are changing very fast. Things will be normal again.
7 Likes
That is really if’s, maybe, and possiblies. That is the same logic as being in a car and getting onto a car wreck, or getting shot in Chicago, etc. Yeah, you have less chance of dying at home, but we can’t just sit around home afraid to die if the flu, I won’t anyways. At this point we are getting information from people and organizations (media & government) that I trust less than a wet fart. If the virus tops the regular flu I might change my mind, but for now I am more concerned with what stupid people may do.
1 Like
There is definitely a lot of mixed signals and BS out there. I won’t dispute that. But the math of epidemiology is very solid and plays out very predictably once the numbers get large enough that the random variation averages out.
And it only takes a few non-cooperative people for the disease to spread throughout the population.
Maybe the death rate is high, maybe less so. Maybe a lot of cases never show up and that inflates the apparent death rate. If a lot of people get it at the same time, then care is overwhelmed and people without care are much more likely to die. This is not speculation. This is already happening. Yes the media amplifies things because money money, but people are dying for real. This is when a tiny percentage of the population has the disease. Multiply by everyone else and it’s more than a measly few hundred thousand dead.
3 Likes
To many people are fixated on the deaths millions more will be on respirators and long lasting health problems and the won’t be the 60 plus group it will be the 25 to 59 hit hardest. I have severe asthma and if you don’t you have no idea what is comming for you. I’m staying in as much as humanly possible only food quick in out and my doctor you can have the ventilator been there done that and don’t want to repeat it.
1 Like
I have no reason to think their numbers are any better or worse than other sources in particular, but if you take numbers from worldometers then these are the deaths from Covid-19:
With 10,000 deaths by March 19th and 34,000 deaths by March 29th, that’s about 24,000 deaths in 10 days. I assume that is worldwide. The same site says that there are between 290,000 to 650,000 deaths due to the flu annually. I presume that is worldwide and has such a range because it varies year to year. 24,000 deaths in 10 days is 876,000 deaths in a year, so at the current death rate it is a bit worse than the worst flu seasons.
I would agree that is not very scary but the speed at which people are dying is increasing and it could be quite a lot higher. When does the death rate stop increasing? Right now worldometers is saying 723,000 Covid-19 cases total. One percent of the world is about 77,000,000 people so even one percent of the world would be a hundred times worse than now. Ten percent of the world would be a thousand times worse.
If that math holds, then we can be pretty sure that the death rate will probably not be worse than ten thousand times worse than the worst flu season. Maybe much less!
Very good points, and thanks for the video. Personally for me there are just too many unknown variables for me to be quaking in my boots at the moment. I start to wonder about other stuff that don’t get reported, like the flu. I’ve never had a flu shot in my life, and I refuse to get one, I also never report to anyone when I do get the flu. How many millions of cases go unreported of the flu, or other diseases? Who knows really? It’s one of those unknown variables. So at this point we are still tossing around ifs and maybes. Tim has one if the best ideas. He knows he is at risk, so he stays away from people to minimize his possible exposure. I’d still like to find accurate numbers to the ages of the people who have died. Another thing that someone mentioned to me, which will be hard to verify, is that some deaths that weren’t actually from covid-19, like cancer, heart attack, etc, are being classified as a covid death if that person had it. 
Interestingly enough, New York has the highest number of infections and the highest number of reported deaths. Could this be from the high population vs land mass? Possibly, but at this point it could also be from the massive amounts of soy the consume. 
Some might find a bit of comfort in this, a NY doctor, Dr. Zev Zelenko wrote this:
March 23, 2020
To all medical professionals around the world:
My name is Dr. Zev Zelenko and I practice medicine in Monroe, NY. For the last 16 years, I have cared for approximately 75% of the adult population of Kiryas Joel, which is a very close knit community of approximately 35,000 people in which the infection spread rapidly and unchecked prior to the imposition of social distancing.
As of today my team has tested approximately 200 people from this community for Covid-19, and 65% of the results have been positive. If extrapolated to the entire community, that means more than 20,000 people are infected at the present time. Of this group, I estimate that there are 1500 patients who are in the high-risk category (i.e. >60, immunocompromised, comorbidities, etc).
Given the urgency of the situation, I developed the following treatment protocol in the pre-hospital setting and have seen only positive results:
-
Any patient with shortness of breath regardless of age is treated.
-
Any patient in the high-risk category even with just mild symptoms is treated.
-
Young, healthy and low risk patients even with symptoms are not treated (unless their circumstances change and they fall into category 1 or 2).
My out-patient treatment regimen is as follows:
-
Hydroxychloroquine 200mg twice a day for 5 days
-
Azithromycin 500mg once a day for 5 days
-
Zinc sulfate 220mg once a day for 5 days
The rationale for my treatment plan is as follows. I combined the data available from China and South Korea with the recent study published from France (sites available on request). We know that hydroxychloroquine helps Zinc enter the cell. We know that Zinc slows viral replication within the cell. Regarding the use of azithromycin, I postulate it prevents secondary bacterial infections. These three drugs are well known and usually well tolerated, hence the risk to the patient is low.
Since last Thursday, my team has treated approximately 350 patients in Kiryas Joel and another 150 patients in other areas of New York with the above regimen.
Of this group and the information provided to me by affiliated medical teams, we have had ZERO deaths, ZERO hospitalizations, and ZERO intubations. In addition, I have not heard of any negative side effects other than approximately 10% of patients with temporary nausea and diarrhea.
In sum, my urgent recommendation is to initiate treatment in the outpatient setting as soon as possible in accordance with the above. Based on my direct experience, it prevents acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS), prevents the need for hospitalization and saves lives.
With much respect,
Dr. Zev Zelenko
Take anything I post with a grain of salt, it’s really difficult to verify what’s real and what’s not. Surely someone else has done some poking around. 
A lot of these things can be true at the same time. A fatality rate of 1% means that 99% of people get mild flu or nothing, but it still implies 2-3 million deaths across the US.
There are only about 50,000 intensive care places in the US and more than 10% of cases need hospitalisation, so they’re going to be overloaded soon, and we can see from Iran than once the hospitals are overloaded, the fatality rate goes up to about 5%, which means we could see 10 million deaths in the US if we don’t flatten the curve right out, and quickly.
And yes, it’s true that millions of people die from other things all the time, and it’s not the end of the world, but that’s not much comfort when it’s people you know.
1 Like
Doc Zelenko is a family practitioner though. He doesn’t have the numbers to say whether his med cocktail actually works, if it’s just luck, or his patients weren’t that bad off to begin with. The biggest issue is there isn’t a shot for this yet. Flu herd immunity is what keeps the percentage of the population that doesn’t get the shot safe. Before inoculations the flu was much more deadly.
It is very hard to judge the different “what ifs” against each other. But if you like anecdotal evidence, then read some stories coming from Italy. It is hard to accept that your life has to change so dramatically. But it is true. Take a look at the stories of the 1918 spanish flu, or the fact that NY hospitals are renting refrigerator trucks as makeshift morgues or the ice skating rink morgue in Madrid. This is not business as usual.
At this point, staying at home is not about personal protection for most of us. It is a selfless thing to do. This is the point of my 60,000 people at the stadium example. I am sure you are very brave, but what we need now is your bravery to do what is right for other people, and not just do what you want for yourself.
5 Likes
It’s a bit ironic you mention Italy. I have a coworker who has family there, he was mentioning them this past Tuesday before they sent everyone home. I’m curious as to what his people have to say, but I won’t know anything until they let us come back to work.
A little bit unironically, back in 2015 NY had the chance to buy 16k ventilators, but opted not to, and they have atleast a few thousand sitting in a warehouse that they are just sitting on for some reason. This Cuomo guy makes me sick. I see him on the news complaining about not having masks, ventilators, etc… but they sure can throw a bunch of what they say they dont have, up for a little photo OP.
Also, I’m not trying to push the sense that I’m brave, or out being selfish, I’ve been practicing social distancing long before it was cool or the hip thing to do. I also have distanced myself from the old people in my family, but I still don’t think shutting down the world makes any sense. Personally I think we would see a lot more deaths if the global economy tanked, than this virus would ever kill, and not from starving but just the mere chaos that will most likely ensue. 
Source?