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Normal flu is pretty bad. It can kill pediatrics too.... which this doesn’t tend to do. Mainly we have things like herd immunity, vaccines, antivirals, etc... to help against it. Plus there are a lot of different strains of flu and some are more severe then others and the less severe ones are more common. So it doesn’t seem that bad. We also keep making vaccines for it and it keeps coming back every year. So it becomes more of an annoyance to the population then a sign of the apocalypse.
The novel virus was bad in the beginning because upper respiratory (easiest to spread) and we don’t have immunity (natural or acquired) to stop or slow it down due to its novelty. So it’s got a really high transition rate. (Thankfully it’s not as high as measles - which has an outrageous infection rate.) The fact that cities were locked down and it still managed to infect the whole world shows that it’s truly infectious. But the thing about corona is it also got more severe after it’s mutation that caused the second strain. Increasing the lethality of it. And now it seems like it wants to mutate again. Also since becoming a pandemic illness, it can cause cytokine storms in young people. Which can kill. And not just anyone but people with good immune systems. People are starting to realize that now and think cytokine storm syndrome treatments can be used to treat severe cases of covid-19.
The really scary thing about a cytokine storm is that a young person can have a mild case of the disease and boom your organs start failing. That’s why it’s improtant to check your serum ferritin if you get a bad case. Or if your symptoms change from mild to worse.
Young people can also have asthma, anemia, clotting disorders (a female coworker younger then me has a clotting disorder because of her birth control), smoking, diabetes, high blood pressure.
Covid-19 also seems to want to target men more then women. Which I have never heard the flu selecting for. (Theories include of women having an extra X chromosome to fight the new disease).
But yea. It’s going to take years of study and also looking at genetics and culture and stuff before we grasp the true danger level of the disease.
But if it helps people make better decisions about their lives and the lives of other people.... then yes... it’s worse then flu.
Also with the Spanish flu, you had multiple waves. You had a wave. It went away. The virus mutated... then came again. And again. We are still in the first wave of this one. The potential could be there to mutate so drastically that we get a new, worse strain after everyone starts coming out of their lockdowns.
Which is why governments have mentioned we could be still battling this 18 months from now. Or that it might become seasonal.
But at that point, our hospitals will have more ventilators, supplies, treatments options. Plus even without a vaccine, since most of the population will get infected at some point... herd immunity will start playing a role. And protect those most vulnerable. (not to mention that a lot of people will have already died at that point).
The best thing right now is to keep the hospitals from overloading. Not doing risky behaviors and stay healthy and keep away from other people. It actually will make the pandemic last longer but it will help protect healthcare workers right now. And save lives by delaying the virus from spreading any more in the future. Because people who are already infected are already infected right now. They just may not have signs yet. The next two weeks we will get the people who were infected this past week. It’s going to take a few weeks of lockdown before new cases start to decline.
Hospitals already have to deliver babies, perform surgery, treat heart attacks, treat burn victims, and care for a ton of other things.
The fact that most countries are pulling out laws from World War II and converting production to hospitals supplies and ventilators and drafting retired medical people. And potentially drafting people who lost their jobs into the medical field. Plus calling on reserve medical military. Shows that we are in a war. Not a war like any other. But a war of health. And in war, it’s not just the job of the people on the frontlines to take care of the problem. It’s the job of everyone.
My dad and I handed out masks from his doomsday bird flu/zombie Apocalypse reserve in our barn. They are 10-15 years old but they are the good N95 kind. Some nurses were breaking down crying and thanking me. Because we don’t have the medical supplies in rural Mississippi. We don’t even have the protection like you see on tv. And we aren’t going to be getting them. Because they are going to be sent to the large and rich states like New York, California, Florida, etc.... they talk about hospitals in New Orleans running out of supplies in a week and New York running out of supplies now. We barely have supplies on a day-to-day basis to begin with.
So yea. I want people to take this stuff more seriously. Because I’m a young and healthy person but I’m also a healthcare worker. And I could die from this or pick it up from the hospital and bring it to my family. And mad at people not taking it seriously.
The novel virus was bad in the beginning because upper respiratory (easiest to spread) and we don’t have immunity (natural or acquired) to stop or slow it down due to its novelty. So it’s got a really high transition rate. (Thankfully it’s not as high as measles - which has an outrageous infection rate.) The fact that cities were locked down and it still managed to infect the whole world shows that it’s truly infectious. But the thing about corona is it also got more severe after it’s mutation that caused the second strain. Increasing the lethality of it. And now it seems like it wants to mutate again. Also since becoming a pandemic illness, it can cause cytokine storms in young people. Which can kill. And not just anyone but people with good immune systems. People are starting to realize that now and think cytokine storm syndrome treatments can be used to treat severe cases of covid-19.
The really scary thing about a cytokine storm is that a young person can have a mild case of the disease and boom your organs start failing. That’s why it’s improtant to check your serum ferritin if you get a bad case. Or if your symptoms change from mild to worse.
Young people can also have asthma, anemia, clotting disorders (a female coworker younger then me has a clotting disorder because of her birth control), smoking, diabetes, high blood pressure.
Covid-19 also seems to want to target men more then women. Which I have never heard the flu selecting for. (Theories include of women having an extra X chromosome to fight the new disease).
But yea. It’s going to take years of study and also looking at genetics and culture and stuff before we grasp the true danger level of the disease.
But if it helps people make better decisions about their lives and the lives of other people.... then yes... it’s worse then flu.
--- Double Post Merged, , Original Post Date: ---
Also with the Spanish flu, you had multiple waves. You had a wave. It went away. The virus mutated... then came again. And again. We are still in the first wave of this one. The potential could be there to mutate so drastically that we get a new, worse strain after everyone starts coming out of their lockdowns.
Which is why governments have mentioned we could be still battling this 18 months from now. Or that it might become seasonal.
But at that point, our hospitals will have more ventilators, supplies, treatments options. Plus even without a vaccine, since most of the population will get infected at some point... herd immunity will start playing a role. And protect those most vulnerable. (not to mention that a lot of people will have already died at that point).
The best thing right now is to keep the hospitals from overloading. Not doing risky behaviors and stay healthy and keep away from other people. It actually will make the pandemic last longer but it will help protect healthcare workers right now. And save lives by delaying the virus from spreading any more in the future. Because people who are already infected are already infected right now. They just may not have signs yet. The next two weeks we will get the people who were infected this past week. It’s going to take a few weeks of lockdown before new cases start to decline.
Hospitals already have to deliver babies, perform surgery, treat heart attacks, treat burn victims, and care for a ton of other things.
The fact that most countries are pulling out laws from World War II and converting production to hospitals supplies and ventilators and drafting retired medical people. And potentially drafting people who lost their jobs into the medical field. Plus calling on reserve medical military. Shows that we are in a war. Not a war like any other. But a war of health. And in war, it’s not just the job of the people on the frontlines to take care of the problem. It’s the job of everyone.
My dad and I handed out masks from his doomsday bird flu/zombie Apocalypse reserve in our barn. They are 10-15 years old but they are the good N95 kind. Some nurses were breaking down crying and thanking me. Because we don’t have the medical supplies in rural Mississippi. We don’t even have the protection like you see on tv. And we aren’t going to be getting them. Because they are going to be sent to the large and rich states like New York, California, Florida, etc.... they talk about hospitals in New Orleans running out of supplies in a week and New York running out of supplies now. We barely have supplies on a day-to-day basis to begin with.
So yea. I want people to take this stuff more seriously. Because I’m a young and healthy person but I’m also a healthcare worker. And I could die from this or pick it up from the hospital and bring it to my family. And mad at people not taking it seriously.
