The question is *why*. I don't dispute the death rates are higher. If that is what you mean by more dangerous, then sure. Causal mechanisms. People die from all kinds of diseases. If most of the people dying right now are people with co-morbidities, especially people with high blood pressure and diabetes, it says something. If kids are having the disease but not showing symptoms, but adults are having the disease and are, what does that mean? HIV has almost become a footnote because treatments exist now that didn't exist before. Again, causal mechanisms.
Yeah. In the long run, this may also become a footnote. Hopefully, at some point, there will be treatments.
Now, in reading what NL is talking about, I just heard fear and frustration when Tropical wrote: "F..k them all." So I did not take it personally. But it seems NL probably did. So, I won't blame him for his response if it had more to do with hearing that as directed at him and others who are not seeing the impact of this virus how I now am. So, as always, there is a point in there. There is no need to attack people who have differing understandings of the situation.
But as far as I understand things, for now, part of the issue with this current coronavirus is that it is so contagious that, right now, the potential is for our healthcare system and our hospitals to be so flooded with cases, so overwhelmed, that people who normally would not die of other things that, under more normal circumstances would be very treatable, will end up not getting treatment and/or dying. A huge part of the issue is the collateral damage. Not just the the direct impact of the virus on each separate person.
And if you do the math of someone with this coronavirus going into the hospital and getting the health care practitioners sick, and without knowing, them giving COVID-19 to patients who were in the hospital for something else.....and add that out exponentially.....well, then some of the actual issue seems to be the healthcare system getting overwhelmed while there is still, as of now, no treatment for the condition and no way to stop the spread without isolation.
When there are effective treatments, and when most of the world has had this once already, it will not be such a big deal. It is fine to compare this to the flu. But perhaps it falls more into the category of the 1918-1920 influenza epidemic, even if this is not as deadly as that was. And the reason is, it is spreading like wildfire and there is no known treatment as of now; those were also the circumstances of the influenza epidemic of 1918-1920. Once there were effective treatments, it still was bad, but not overwhelming. When there is a treatment for the COVID-19 coronavirus, then, this will be something we will just live with and it will become part of the fabric of life. So, hopefully, that is the long view.
By the way, I am going to try and paraphrase something I heard one medical expert say: "In January" (I think he said January) "I said that most of the cases of COVID-19 were classified as mild. And it seems that gave people the idea that it was like having a cold. I want to apologize for what seemed to be misleading information. I want to explain that a little better. That was the information out of China at the time. But the reason that is misleading is how they were categorizing mild and severe. They were categorizing cases as severe only when the person needed to be on a ventilator. All other cases were categorized as mild, which included lots of people who had pneumonia and were very sick."
That is my memory of basically what he said.
Understanding that, for me, helped me realize that we still don't really understand what we are dealing with. And that a lack of ability to treat patients with the virus is a huge factor in the current impact. Again, I do hope that some day this will be another footnote and that treatments will be effective. But for now, one of the biggest issue is slowing down the spread of the virus so that hospitals are not completely overwhelmed as it spreads.
My thoughts do go out to all those in the healthcare system who are on the front lines of dealing with this pandemic.
