Coronavirus in the United States - news and thoughts

Certainly with the initial dx yes, but when given the survivability facts it makes a huge difference.
Are they more relieved to know it has a 95% cure rate than if it has a 20% cure rate?

 

You have three nodes, "No Cancer," "Worst Cancer," and "Other Cancer." If you eliminate the "no cancer" node, then, in a relative sense, sure, you are happier than you were a second ago if the "worst cancer" node is eliminated. But if you are happier than you were 5 minutes ago, before the "no cancer" node was eliminated, assuming that is the most likely result, that would be incredibly irrational.

People are currently worried about eliminating the "No Covid" node. So his point was unbelievably glib and useless.

 

We can just agree to disagree.

 

You could have saved yourself the time of writing your diatribe if you had read my post. The relief would be felt not in the diagnosis, but in the prognosis. There most always is a period of uncertainty after diagnosis while the medical team determines treatment options. This period of time is most stressful. After a week of sleepless nights to get the news that you have a 95% chance of full survival is met with at least relief, if not joy. At least by normal people with a solid grounding and outlook on life.

 

Be careful there!! They’re going to put you in the bad corner with snowflake!

 

No we would not have. You are naive in that thinking. This this is going to run its course until a vaccine is developed. You can run, but you can’t hide.

 

Whether it is communicable or not has no bearing on the mindset of those who will choose to face it or run and hide.

I guess I better sell my Harley. You and the others will certainly outlaw them since riding one is more dangerous than contracting and dying from COVID.

 

Say what? Nobody feels joy when receiving a diagnosis of cancer and I understand that's not your point. To your point, people may feel relief when receiving a clean bill of health and that stands both for cancer and covid. And in both cases, it takes time to get to that point of receiving a clean bill of health.

The numbers also don't simply work the way you are suggesting. One doesn't get covid, then realize they have a 99% chance of survival. Sure they might. Or they might have a 90% chance, or a 60% chance or a 99.99% chance, or a 10% chance. Every individual case is different and we still don't know enough about the virus to just laugh it off. We also continue to make the mistake of addressing fatality rate as a sole indicator. There is enough evidence suggesting lingering (if not lifelong) complications to make covid a legitimate concern for everyone.

 

This country has been through some hard times and persevered. The resolve we showed after Pearl Harbor, the Civil War, attacking the British on Christmas. Fast forward to today and people are running like a bunch of girls from a virus with a 0.05% death rate (for otherwise healthy individuals) and more people dying at protests than unarmed African-Americans killed by police in the last 3 years. The media drives the narrative so much these days. The government lied to us about masks and now they're of utmost importance. I could go on and on.

 

He won't even consider your point so just stop wasting you time.

 

Media drive hysteria.
My local paper headline yesterday..... "Florida daily death count SMASHES record" the facts 186 died the prior highest was 171 a whopping 9% increase.
RECORD SMASHED.

Stuff like that fuels people's distrust of the media.

 

Disagree. Look at Taiwan. They didn't behave like idiots; they took it seriously from the start. They STILL have fewer fatalities than the Diamond Princess cruise ship. They have the same number of total cases (460) that many states are getting in a single day. If we had a clue and if people actually behaved responsibly, we certainly could have beaten this virus. We could have had fall sports and we wouldn't be scrambling to figure out how to open schools and maintain what used to be a strong economy.

 

totally missing the point, your Harley isn’t contagious either. People aren’t hiding from it because they are terrified to get it in many cases, they are hiding because they don’t want to spread it to someone else, infect someone in their own household who is vulnerable, or their neighbor, or the person who is working at the grocery store etc.
As I said, I personally don’t want to get it and take reasonable precautions, but I still go out and live life. But damned if I will do anything where I have to have to live with having put my dad’s life in jeopardy. Or the 60 year old overweight manager of my grocery store who needs to work to eat. Or my friend who had cancer etc. I am in good shape with underlying conditions and could easily be an asympomatic.
Short of driving my Harley directly into them to try and kill them, there isn’t even remotely an apt comparison there. Unless 150k people got run over by Harleys this year and I missed it on the news.

So if that makes me a “do gooder”, sign me up. All day every day.

 

Yep.. I'm seeing those headlines too. "Deaths soaring" and stuff like that. They're glorified tabloids at this point.

 

Bull. When my family members have been diagnosed with cancer, I didn't worry about myself or anyone that family member has been in contact with. When a family member gets diagnosed with COVID, I ask myself, when was the last time I spent time with them, who else has spend time with them, and did I spend any time with them...

When someone is diagnosed with cancer, there's zero relief. Some relief may come if/when the prognosis is 95% or better survival rate, but ask the patient which they would rather have, cancer with 95% survival rate or no cancer at all, who chooses the cancer?

Sure there is risk in everything we do, but we also do what we can to mitigate it. I assume you don't ride your Harley, 120 mph, no helmet, through a school zone. Why? Too risky. Not just for you, but for people in your community at large.

The current risk for COVID goes far beyond death. Unless you enjoy blod clots, lung issues, heart disease, and neurological disorders. We have no idea what survivors will have to deal with 5 years from now? 10 years? 25 years? Some viruses, like chickenpox, hang around and presents itself as shingles decades later. We just don't know what COVID-19 might do in the future.

If there were a way we could lower the risk of thousands of people getting cancer, we'd advocate for taking that step. There is a way to do that with COVID. The alternative is to add to the already 150,000 dead in this country.

 

Lol. You can see my follow up post for clarification. But Germany currently has a 580 case 7 day moving average, ours is north of 67000. So I guess Germany is naive too. At 580 cases a day those can easily be contact traced and life can get back relative normality even if the virus is still around. We chose ignorance and selfishness, and here we are.

 

I read your post. You said "diagnosis," not prognosis. I am sorry you can't communicate effectively.

However, your defense here is still useless because you are now comparing two very different decision nodes. You are comparing relief at being told you have the better prognosis compared to a much worse option with the desire to avoid the worst diagnosis.

If you want to actually analyze this, the expected utility of bad diagnosis/good prognosis is considerably worse than good diagnosis.

 

Surely with some illnesses the odds go way down for survival, but we are talking about respiratory illnesses here that can have acute effects (i.e. generally kills in days/weeks, not months or years).

This thing is easily multiples worse than the flu for those higher age groups. Most importantly, there is a vaccine for flu which at least is generally half effective at totally preventing severe illness, and even halfway effective helps mitigate the spread.

This thing is obviously NOT the flu, and other than flu I'm not sure what else to compare a respiratory illness too. Comparisons to cancer or motorcycle accidents are asinine to me.

 

Yep - only 186 daily deaths in Florida yesterday. How dare they exaggerate! Meanwhile, other daily death totals:

UK - 116 (includes many from Monday, when zero were reported)
S Korea - 1
Norway - 0 (none since July 16)
Australia - 6
Canada - 11
Germany - 0 (none since July 24)

So the daily death toll of Florida (population 21million) was 186.
The daily death toll in the UK, S Korea, Norway, Australia, Canada, & Germany (combined population 267 million) was 134.

You're right. The local paper sensationalized.

 

The thing is that by acting in a stupid manner, you aren't just taking on risks for yourself. Riding a motorcycle is a risk you take on for yourself. Not doing what you can to avoid Covid is you selfishly taking risks for everybody that you are in contact with even if they don't wish to take on extra risks.