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03-17-2020, 12:33 PM
(This post was last modified: 03-18-2020, 07:47 AM by Bob Butler 54.)
(03-17-2020, 11:49 AM)sbarrera Wrote: [A]lthough one would like to change today's world back to the spirit of one hundred years or more ago, it cannot be done. Thus it is important to make the best out of every generation. - Hagakure
The spirit of the Industrial Age was to start a Crisis War at the drop of a hat. If they could afford it, one major power would do it, and all it took was one. Nukes changed that. I do not miss the change.
I suspect the culture responds to the technology rather than the other way around. Things like the printing press, the steam engine or nukes caused major shifts in the culture. If you resisted the shift too much, suppressed the technology and change, you got overwhelmed.
At one level, I agree. You can't turn back the clock. You can't negate the invention of the technology. The cultures must adapt to available technology. You do have to make the best out of every generation.
However, many will resist the change. It is oh so tempting to cling to what has recently been. That is what cultures do, after all.
That this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom, and that government of the people, by the people, for the people shall not perish from the earth.
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03-17-2020, 05:05 PM
(This post was last modified: 03-17-2020, 05:05 PM by Warren Dew.)
(03-17-2020, 11:49 AM)sbarrera Wrote: But, assuming that it is correct that COVID-19 is actually much more severe than the recent flus, there would have been the same issue with case overload that was experienced in 1918 with the Spanish flu and in Italy today. So there would have been no denying a problem. I would guess, based on the 2T v. 4T difference, that GI-led government would just get blamed no matter what they did - they would get accused of either overreacting or underreacting as fit the circumstances.
The idea that Covid-19 is much more severe than recent flus can't really be reconciled with the idea that Covid-19 is much easier to transmit than recent flus; if those were both true, the deaths from Covid-19 would necessarily be much higher than they actually are. For that matter, even considering only identified cases, Germany's fatality rate is barely higher than the average flu at 0.2%, so the idea that Covid-19 is especially severe is becoming more and more difficult to sustain.
The Spanish Flu was deadly in part because the postwar world was exhausted and unable to handle it, but also in very large part because antibiotics didn't exist to treat secondary infections. That's inapplicable to today's world. Italy is applicable but the Covid-19 deaths there don't match recent flu deaths yet, though they might yet due to massive mismanagement.
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Steve Barrera
[A]lthough one would like to change today's world back to the spirit of one hundred years or more ago, it cannot be done. Thus it is important to make the best out of every generation. - Hagakure
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(03-17-2020, 10:18 PM)sbarrera Wrote: I'm seeing much higher mortality rates than 0.2%
https://www.worldometers.info/coronaviru...Y4eDfIK9Hg
Nobody knows exactly what the mortality rate of the coronavirus is yet.
The current figures you're seeing are derived by taking the number of deaths and dividing by the number of confirmed cases. But the number of actual cases is much, much higher than the number of confirmed cases. The real number of cases might be, depending on location, twice as high, or 5 times as high, or 10 times as high, or more. So the true mortality rate is going to be a fraction of what is being reported.
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(03-17-2020, 11:43 PM)Mickey123 Wrote: (03-17-2020, 10:18 PM)sbarrera Wrote: I'm seeing much higher mortality rates than 0.2%
https://www.worldometers.info/coronaviru...Y4eDfIK9Hg
Nobody knows exactly what the mortality rate of the coronavirus is yet.
The current figures you're seeing are derived by taking the number of deaths and dividing by the number of confirmed cases. But the number of actual cases is much, much higher than the number of confirmed cases. The real number of cases might be, depending on location, twice as high, or 5 times as high, or 10 times as high, or more. So the true mortality rate is going to be a fraction of what is being reported.
Are mortality rates ever calculated from actual infections vs. known cases? How could you ever measure the former?
Steve Barrera
[A]lthough one would like to change today's world back to the spirit of one hundred years or more ago, it cannot be done. Thus it is important to make the best out of every generation. - Hagakure
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(03-18-2020, 07:40 AM)sbarrera Wrote: Are mortality rates ever calculated from actual infections vs. known cases? How could you ever measure the former?
Yes; the "actual infections" are estimated rather than measured. This is how the 0.1% flu fatality rate is derived.
If you look only at confirmed cases, the flu fatality rate is in the range of 10%-25%, way higher than for Covid-19. We know there are a lot of flu cases that are never tested for, though.
