General / Off-Topic The safest place

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A few numbers that may show why the herd immunity approach isn’t politically viable.

To obtain herd immunity, 60-80% of a population needs to be immune.
Best estimate so far on Covid-19 mortality rate is 0.66%
Because I’m an optimist, I will use 60% and 0.5%.

In 1 million people, we need 600,000 infected. Of these, 3000 will die.
I Norway with 5 million people, that means 15,000 dead.
In a normal year, 41,000 people die. That is over 35% Increase. Some of the 15,000 would have died anyway, but 30% over a normal year does not look good.

Those 15,000 Norwegians would be 900,000 Americans or 4.2 million Chinese.

Herd immunity isn’t a realistic goal, even when you are an optimist like me.
Most of the people that would make up the 41k fatalities are the same ones who would make up the 15k fatalities due to covid. That is why any government willing to roll all deaths where a person technically does have covid but actually falls down a flight of stairs as a part of that statistic is so dangerous and irresponsible. The numbers are wildly inflated by utilizing this technique for one very specific purpose: to keep you and everyone else defecating yourselves with fear... because if you're afraid they can strip away your rights and treat you with all the dignity of a war criminal.
 
A few numbers that may show why the herd immunity approach isn’t politically viable.

To obtain herd immunity, 60-80% of a population needs to be immune.
Best estimate so far on Covid-19 mortality rate is 0.66%
Because I’m an optimist, I will use 60% and 0.5%.

In 1 million people, we need 600,000 infected. Of these, 3000 will die.
I Norway with 5 million people, that means 15,000 dead.
In a normal year, 41,000 people die. That is over 35% Increase. Some of the 15,000 would have died anyway, but 30% over a normal year does not look good.

Those 15,000 Norwegians would be 900,000 Americans or 4.2 million Chinese.

Herd immunity isn’t a realistic goal, even when you are an optimist like me.

It is far, far worse than that. The .66% mortality is provided hospital care is available to all those who need it. If that is done, 'only' .66% will die. But if you infect 60% of the norwegians in a year, that means 3 million will be infected, of which 300,000 will need to be hospitalized for an average of ~23 days. If you spread them out perfectly evenly you can have 16 'loads' of patients (365/23). That means that for the next year every single day almost 19,750 COVID beds will be taken. On average, Norway has 3,600 normal hospital beds non-occupied and a total of 800 ventilators. Worse, it is quite possible that those who were infected are not always immune, especially the milder cases. Best of luck.

Under your numbers 45k people would die in the Netherlands. If that was 'all' we'd suffer if we'd do nothing measures would be gone tomorrow. But we cannot have hospitals be overloaded for more than a year. Thats just a complete no-go. They wont say it in as many words, but the objective is to keep measures as light as possible so hospitals stay as close to 100% as possible without causing an overload. People will die, sure. But both 'doing nothing' and 'full lockdown for a year' are simply not viable either, and ultimately far worse.

We're currently vastly over capacity in the Netherlands, and hanging on by giving medical staff more patients than they are normally supposed to care for (beds/ventilators arent the issue, staff is). We're currently at the peak, and once hospitals are <100% and R0<1 we're going to open up. Not 'lets all go to a concert' open, but still.
 
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Most of the people that would make up the 41k fatalities are the same ones who would make up the 15k fatalities due to covid. That is why any government willing to roll all deaths where a person technically does have covid but actually falls down a flight of stairs as a part of that statistic is so dangerous and irresponsible. The numbers are wildly inflated by utilizing this technique for one very specific purpose: to keep you and everyone else defecating yourselves with fear... because if you're afraid they can strip away your rights and treat you with all the dignity of a war criminal.

I dunno, maybe have a chat with the families of bus drivers and the NHS people that have died here in the UK and see if you make it out of the room alve with that conspiracy crap.

It might be different where you are but here people who aren't part of the usual fatalities are dying. It's not made up stuff.

Try telling them about your rights to free dumb while they're the ones taking the hit.
 
I dunno, maybe have a chat with the families of bus drivers and the NHS people that have died here in the UK and see if you make it out of the room alve with that conspiracy crap.

It might be different where you are but here people who aren't part of the usual fatalities are dying. It's not made up stuff.

Try telling them about your rights to free dumb while they're the ones taking the hit.
Yep, and the attitude your throwing is exactly what they're counting on.

Take your high horse and stick it, buddy.
 
They are somehow right tho.
First reported death case in my country was a terminally ill cancer patient, discharged from a hospital in France and sent to die home.
He got somehow infected, he died and he was reported as a Covid-19 victim :(

Granted, not all the cases are like that, but cases like that are not that rare...
 
Yep, and the attitude your throwing is exactly what they're counting on.

Take your high horse and stick it, buddy.

So fine - put yourself on the line and let everyone else stay at home.

Once it's all done you can get your gunz out and tear it all up to get things back to normal.

And I'll join you.

But right now that isn't the optimal plan as far as I can see - not when you're betting someone else's existence on it.
 
So fine - put yourself on the line and let everyone else stay at home.

Once it's all done you can get your gunz out and tear it all up to get things back to normal.

And I'll join you.

But right now that isn't the optimal plan as far as I can see - not when you're betting someone else's existence on it.
I am putting it on the line. Everybody else can hide in their holes for all I care. I'm out there doing exactly what I was doing before and will continue to do so. But that's not really the discussion, is it? The governments of the world are forcing people to go without work while they're effectively under house arrest. Many/most don't even have the choice. That's not a "conspiracy theory" that's a goddam fact. Not to say there aren't middle aged "healthy" people who have died, but the ONLY thing we know about them is that there aren't very many; the vast majority are old, sick and suffering from varying degrees of poor health. That's what's driving the big scary numbers, and aside from a bit of anecdotal stories here and there, there's not a lot of meat to the assertion you were making.

You just leap straight to conspiracy theory when I offer the idea that governments are rolling everything they can into Covid death statistics regardless of cause of death, ok, let me give you a couple examples so you can become educated:

And the kicker is just this: I don't go to work with the assumption that I'm correct and invulnerable, impervious to death. I go to work despite the fear that I might come to harm.
 
The risk for some minimum wage hospitality worker (for example) spreading the virus or falling ill and becoming a burden to an already overloaded system themselves exceeds the value of their normal contribution to society. The most economical solution for stuff like this is to pay them to stay the hell home and not make things worse, not push society to return to a semblance of normalcy before it's ready to do so.

Of course many right-leaning western governments wouldn't dream of this. Fortunately, I've never had much use for government and when my less well-off friends and family are confronted with the option of continuing to work when it's neither safe for them, nor for the rest of us, or loosing their pitiful incomes, I will insist they quit, and I will put them up for as long as required.

And I agree with that, to a point.

However there are those of us who still have to work (and volunteer) to keep the country ticking over need to go to work, and some of us are in minimum wage/low paying jobs.

When I have to step back onto the deck of a ship to deliver aid where its needed, I'll be working. Even now because I've always worked for the good of society, I'm out on in the village ready to deliver goods to and check up on those whom are vulnerable.

TL/DR: I didn't like the sneering down the nose idea of Patrick's post that somehow those of us wanting to continue to work for the good of all don't have our Human dignity or pride, when it's us ensuring that the electricity is on so Patrick can spam badly formed 'English speaking west bad' prose.
 
And I agree with that, to a point.

However there are those of us who still have to work (and volunteer) to keep the country ticking over need to go to work, and some of us are in minimum wage/low paying jobs.

When I have to step back onto the deck of a ship to deliver aid where its needed, I'll be working. Even now because I've always worked for the good of society, I'm out on in the village ready to deliver goods to and check up on those whom are vulnerable.

TL/DR: I didn't like the sneering down the nose idea of Patrick's post that somehow those of us wanting to continue to work for the good of all don't have our Human dignity or pride, when it's us ensuring that the electricity is on so Patrick can spam badly formed 'English speaking west bad' prose.
Well spoken, man. And thank you for all the work you're putting in in your neck of the woods. You sound like a force for good, and that's what the world needs quite badly right now.
 
Most of the people that would make up the 41k fatalities are the same ones who would make up the 15k fatalities due to covid. That is why any government willing to roll all deaths where a person technically does have covid but actually falls down a flight of stairs as a part of that statistic is so dangerous and irresponsible. The numbers are wildly inflated by utilizing this technique for one very specific purpose: to keep you and everyone else defecating yourselves with fear... because if you're afraid they can strip away your rights and treat you with all the dignity of a war criminal.



I dunno, maybe have a chat with the families of bus drivers and the NHS people that have died here in the UK and see if you make it out of the room alve with that conspiracy crap.

It might be different where you are but here people who aren't part of the usual fatalities are dying. It's not made up stuff.

Try telling them about your rights to free dumb while they're the ones taking the hit.

It certainly is worth being aware that the media AND governments will try to spin this and use this to fulfill their own agendas for SURE.

Equally, that doesn’t mean that the danger isn’t very REAL and lots of people who wouldn’t normally die will die.
How many? We will only be able to call the judgement of how we dealt with this in the longer term.

just watched one of the bbc’s reporters intro to the news:
Source: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=L6wIcpdJyCI


Also, noticed some in our society just awarded themselves a 10£k sum to help them adapt to working from home...
Hmmm.
 
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They are somehow right tho.
First reported death case in my country was a terminally ill cancer patient, discharged from a hospital in France and sent to die home.
He got somehow infected, he died and he was reported as a Covid-19 victim :(

Granted, not all the cases are like that, but cases like that are not that rare...

Again: anecdotes. You can support any random nonsense with cherry-picked anecdotes. Number of ICU beds have been more than doubled in the Netherlands and they are packed.That isn't normal. You can't put the entire national healthcare system at 200% of capacity with some devious accounting. Despite all measurements the number of people dying above the normal weekly average is more than all other causes combined. You don't get that by writing the wrong diagnosis on some form.

People are dying. They are real. Pretending otherwise is not just incredibly stupid, it is needlessly cruel.
 



Never seen anything on this scale in my life.

The economics of this is crazy.
It will make 2007 crash look like nuffink.
I’ve been working hard trying to facilitate my students’ final show - ironically a public show of interactive artworks. I’m earning nothing from my other freelance work but I’m used to living within my means.
I’m worried for all the millions living on credit who will lose their jobs.
We could have another run on the banks without any more pretend money to prop them up.
I don’t think our govts. had a choice but to lockdown eventually, given the risk of numbers dying.
 
Detroit it taking it pretty hard, with a disproportionate volume of casualties among the black population.
One simple reason for increased infection is the use of public transport being higher by the poorest people. But there might be a biochemical reason too.

ACE-inhibitor drugs are well known to be less effective in this subset of patients.
SARS Cov2 virus binds to the ACE2 protein as its receptor.
One pathway around ACE inhibition is having plenty of ACE2. Maybe the same reason the virus is more deadly here.

Edit:
Crap.
What happens on the African continent then? I hope I am wrong about the biochem.
 
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