If you have a good grasp on the Covid-19 situation, good for you. You may be the only one.
Frankly, as somebody with a good grasp on science, I'll confess that I don't.
What I know is that Covid 19 is a member of the Coronavirus family of viruses.
So is the common cold.
Indeed, that appears to be why children are in the .2% fatality category for Covid 19. Their immune systems are robust anyhow, and they're exposed to every Coronavirus going. I can't recall where I learned it, but I also dimly recall that children's immune systems work a bit differently than adults in that theirs will take on near hits in terms of infections, where as adults are much more targeted. In other words, for a kid, if its a Coronavirus, their immune system is taking it on.
I also know that mortality rates really don't start to climb into the really menacing level until people are in the 60 to 69 demographic and it keeps climbing from there. Up in the 80+ demographic it's crowding 15%.
So that's what I know.
Is that the public health crisis that its being portrayed to be. I.e., should a general population panic be ensuing?
Well, that's less obvious, and some say "no" while others are flaming the fans of the panic.
I've seen a post by an alleged physician (if its on the net, we need a little doubt) that really discounts the panic. It basically states, yes, take it seriously, but unless you are in the really targeted demographics, there's a lot more serious things to worry about. A physician I personally know linked in a news article by a woman from the Pacific Coast who is a scientist herself and who had it, and recovered, as most do. Like most, she didn't know what she had and thought it was the flu. She was tested for the flu later, as she was curious, and found that what she had was Covid 19.
Indeed, her description of it matches very closely a couple of locals who have been sick recently and frankly I think they probably had Covid 19. The description was that the symptoms had a very rapid onset and made a person very sick, in a flu like way, quickly. Within hours of the first symptom hitting. Then it stabilized and a few days later people recovered.
Indeed, with what we know, what we'd expect the advice to be is; 1) if you are sick stay home, and when you recover, stay home for a few more days; and 2) avoid older people even if you aren't sick so you don't get them sick.
Instead the reaction is reaching epic levels. But should it?
Some are saying yes. Indeed, the entire topic has become political with both Bernie Sanders and Joe Biden saying if they were President, they'd be doing things differently. Maybe they would, but I have some doubt the reaction under Biden would have been hugely different. I also think, whether or not you agree with the Administration's reaction, if you are a politician campaigning on this topic you are pretty thin ice in a lot of ways.
I will also note that, ironically, if Trump, Biden and Sanders follow the now widely given age related advice, only Tulsi Gabbard would be campaigning for President right now.
Anyhow, beyond that, a fellow on CNN last night was yelling at the audience that the whole country ought to be basically shut down.
The one physician I noted, however, indicated that shutting down an economy for this is unnecessary. And in an economy in which we're repeatedly told that a lot of people are one paycheck away from disaster, is that really that good of idea? Indeed, with stocks now in the tank, one quasi retired fellow I know who is in the targeted demographic range is more worried about that, as his ability simply to live on his retirement income is hurt as long as the stock market is crazy.
Right now college sports, the NBA, and the NHL are all closing up shop. Major League Baseball will likely follow suit. All that throws a lot of people right out of work. Those people aren't likely to be in the category of people who will die from the Coronavirus but they sure are likely to be hurt by having no work. As noted, older retirees who are in that demographic aren't exactly helped by the financial panic going around.
It would seem that a targeted approach would make more sense, which would be age related. That would basically amount to quarantining all retirement homes for about thirty days and requiring or at least asking those in the most impacted demographics to self quarantine for the same period. If that was done, it'd still spread very rapidly in the general population, but it would actually cycle through fast and the general population would have immunity at that point. From a scientific perspective, that would actually kill the disease.
It's also be real pain for anyone in those demographics, to say the least. And it would also potentially entail risks, even lethal risks to some members of the non targeted demographics, and nobody wants that.
But then, in an open society, do we have any other way of really dealing with this, and not dealing with it effectively isn't an option.
The strategy actually being employed instead is to slow its spread with some demographic targeting. That's in order to keep health services from being overwhelmed. It still acknowledges, oddly enough, a general population wide spread, but at a rate that's capable of being handled over a period of months.
I'd guess a targeted approach would make the most sense in the abstract, while also being wholly unrealistic and perhaps very risky, and some medicos (but not all by any means) essentially are trying to say that by suggesting that if you aren't in a targeted demographic, don't worry. But an article by an Italian physician in Time says the exact opposite and speaks of people in their 40s dying, much younger than the Boomer demographic, and it also speaks of younger people getting it, surviving it, but having really wrecked health following it. That is in fact what happened to a lot of people who survived the 1918-19 Spanish Flu. They survived it, but with such ruined health that they died within a few years anyway after suffering from real debilitations the entire time. My mother was named after an aunt who died in just that fashion.
It's interesting that this would come from an Italian physician, as just such plagues, which were common in the ancient world, lead to the spread of Christianity in Italy in its early years. Christians flocked to help each other during plagues, whereas pagans simply abandoned the sick. Christians accordingly recovered in higher numbers and people took note of it. That credited the faith and it spread.
Maybe there's a lesson in that, in that the physician, who is heir to that tradition, urged the younger cavallier people in the United States (it was addressed to Americans) to "stop killing other people", by which he meant to take it seriously and not spread it around. That would argue for a big society wide reaction, which is what seems to have occured in Singapore and Hong Kong where infection rates are pretty low.
Will we do that? I don't know.
We did during the Spanish Flu, but it got really rolling before we grasped what we needed to do. We were pretty united then too, with World War One contributing to that.
Should we do that? I don't know the answer to that either.
But I do know that people shouldn't be hoarding toilet paper.
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