Hey folks - as a member of the DawgNation community, please remember to abide by simple rules of civil engagement with other members:
- Please no inappropriate usernames (remember that there may be youngsters in the room)
- Personal attacks on other community members are unacceptable, practice the good manners your mama taught you when engaging with fellow Dawg fans
- Use common sense and respect personal differences in the community: sexual and other inappropriate language or imagery, political rants and belittling the opinions of others will get your posts deleted and result in warnings and/ or banning from the forum
- 3/17/19 UPDATE -- We've updated the permissions for our "Football" and "Commit to the G" recruiting message boards. We aim to be the best free board out there and that has not changed. We do now ask that all of you good people register as a member of our forum in order to see the sugar that is falling from our skies, so to speak.
- Please no inappropriate usernames (remember that there may be youngsters in the room)
- Personal attacks on other community members are unacceptable, practice the good manners your mama taught you when engaging with fellow Dawg fans
- Use common sense and respect personal differences in the community: sexual and other inappropriate language or imagery, political rants and belittling the opinions of others will get your posts deleted and result in warnings and/ or banning from the forum
- 3/17/19 UPDATE -- We've updated the permissions for our "Football" and "Commit to the G" recruiting message boards. We aim to be the best free board out there and that has not changed. We do now ask that all of you good people register as a member of our forum in order to see the sugar that is falling from our skies, so to speak.
Options
Covid-19
This discussion has been closed.
Comments
Well, potential 80% infection rate globally and 3% death rate of those infected. We have all seen those stats thrown around. That's over 168 million deaths. How's that for a dire prediction? That would be about 8.4 million deaths in the USA alone.
You saw this on a legitimate, far-reaching, mainstream news site/show?
You just keep doing you, bro. Consistent hypocrisy. All you’ve said is be calm and cautious?
Among other things, in this thread you have said:
”The only hysteria is coming from the deniers...”
and
“We're on the way to being the next Italy I'm sorry to say.”
Man, I really just feel bad for you.
That is true. We will have to compare transmission rates in other countries, and the steps they took, and the context of the environment, and all sorts of those variables and see how best to move forward.
Any updates on Ringo?
God, I hope he doesn't have COVID-19
2 confirmed cases in Gainesville...
...a mutated strain called the nattylightvirus
The hurricane did hit, although in some ways it was more like a tropical storm. The virus continued its spread, with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention switching over on May 4 from counting confirmed cases to making estimates. As of May 5, 980 schools with 607,778 students had been closed in an effort to slow the epidemic. By late June, the CDC was estimating that 1 million Americans had contracted the disease. Meanwhile, on June 11, WHO Director-General Margaret Chan had declared that with the virus spreading in 74 countries “the world is now at the start of the 2009 influenza pandemic.” She also said that a vaccine was on the way, and that measures had been taken “to ensure the largest possible supply of pandemic vaccine in the months to come.”
By the time the vaccines became widely available in November, though, H1N1 was already on the decline. By January, many countries were canceling their vaccine orders, and a German physician and former Social Democratic politician was leading a campaign lambasting the WHO for declaring a “fake” pandemic to gin up business for pharmaceutical manufacturers.
That doesn’t seem fair, given that H1N1 did infect as much as 24% of the world’s population. The overall fatality rate was quite low, at about 0.02% of estimated cases — five time lower than the 0.1% average fatality rate for the seasonal flu — but that’s mainly because H1N1 had little effect on the demographic usually hit hardest by influenza: those 65 and older. For younger people, H1N1 was more dangerous than the seasonal flu, and in countries in South Asia and Africa with youthful populations the H1N1 pandemic really was a big deal, with the CDC later estimating a global death toll ranging from 151,700 to 575,400.
Still, that’s lower than the range that the CDC and WHO now put on the annual death toll from seasonal flu: 290,000 to 650,000. In the U.S., an estimated 60.8 million people contracted the new H1N1 virus from April 2009 through April 2010, 274,304 were hospitalized and 12,469 died. Because the CDC changed the statistical model it uses to make such estimates in 2010 that last number can’t really be compared to recent estimates of seasonal flu fatalities, which ranged from 12,000 in 2011-2012 to 61,000 in 2017-2018. But earlier estimates of overall flu-related deaths in 2008-2009 and 2009-2010 indicate that both flu seasons were less deadly than average.
I bring all this up of course because we are in the throes of new global virus outbreak, although current WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus has so far refused to call it a “pandemic.” I’ll admit that I had entirely forgotten about the H1N1 pandemic until a couple of readers emailed to ask about its absence from a column I wrote last week about the risks posed by the new coronavirus.
Calling attention to 2009 pandemic has become a theme in pro-Donald-Trump circles, with extremely similar articles on PJ Media, Red State and Printly all claiming that President Barack Obama didn’t declare a public health emergency until the H1N1 outbreak had been raging for months (as seen above, the public health emergency was declared less than two weeks after the virus was discovered, although Obama did up that to a “national emergency” in late October). President Trump himself argued on Twitter that “the April 2009-10 Swine Flu, where nearly 13,000 people died in the U.S., was poorly handled.” Such charges are to some extent just “whataboutism,” a propaganda technique used heavily by the Soviet Union back in the day to divert attention from misdeeds and problems by calling attention to the purported misdeeds and problems of others. But comparing Covid-19 with H1N1 can shed some light on why the former has elicited the reaction it has.
For example: Why was H1N1 allowed to spread around the world more or less unchecked, while countries are going to far greater lengths to try to halt Covid-19? Why did the WHO call H1N1 a pandemic but not Covid-19? Isn’t 12,469 deaths a lot worse than the 26 that have been attributed to Covid-19 in the U.S. so far?
That last one is the simplest to answer: Covid-19 is near the beginning of its spread in the U.S., and thus cannot be compared with H1N1’s effect over a full year. If the U.S. death toll from Covid-19 is only 12,469 a year from now, that will likely be counted as a great success. The legitimate worry is that it could be many, many times higher, because Covid-19 is so much deadlier for those who get it than the 2009 H1N1 influenza was.
How much deadlier is still unknown, but of the cases reported to the WHO so far 3.4% have resulted in fatalities. That’s probably misleadingly high because there are so many unreported cases, and in South Korea, which has done the best job of keeping up with the spread of the virus through testing, the fatality rate so far is about 0.7%. But even that is 35 times worse than H1N1 in 2009 and 2010. Multiply 12,469 by 35 and you get 436,415 — which would amount to the biggest U.S. infectious-disease death toll since the 1918 flu. Hospitalization rates are also many times higher for Covid-19, meaning that if it spread as widely as H1N1 it would overwhelm the U.S. health-care system.
That’s one very important reason governments (and stock markets) around the world have reacted so much more strongly to Covid-19 than to the 2009 H1N1 pandemic. Another reason is somewhat more hope-inspiring. It’s that public health experts generally don’t think influenza can be controlled once it starts spreading, other than with a vaccine, whereas several Asian countries seem to have successfully turned back the coronavirus tide, for now at least.
Influenza can’t be controlled because as much as half the transmission of the disease occurs before symptoms appear. With Covid-19 that proportion seems to be lower, meaning that even though it’s more contagious than influenza once symptoms appear, it may be possible to control by testing widely and quickly isolating those who have the disease. This is one reason (there are others) the WHO’s Tedros won’t call it a pandemic. “The threat of a pandemic has become very real,” he said Monday. “But it would be the first pandemic in history that could be controlled.” H1N1 couldn’t be controlled in 2009, but was mild enough that this did not lead to disaster. Covid-19 is a much more dangerous disease that maybe, just maybe, can be stopped.
No idea why you put pandemic in quotes, but it speaks more to the breadth of the infections rather than the severity.
The same thing was said about the Swine Flu in 2009. In the end, while it is estimated that 24% of the World’s population acquired the Swine Flu strain, the mortality rate eventually settled in at .02%, which was 5 times lower than the regular flu’s mortality rate of .1%.
Because people seem to be fixated on the term "pandemic". Just wanted to point out that the Swine Flu was a pandemic, just like this one. It sounds terrifying, but like you said it only refers to the spread of an illness, not the severity. I think people believe a pandemic means a potential zombie apocalypse.
Laughable. You are getting DV’d to oblivion, not deleted by the mods. I didn’t DV you, either. Maybe try posting more rational thoughts?
I know some of these posts are missed and ancient history as this thread grows in pages (currently page 13), so bumping up a friendly reminder on the topic of the reported mortality rates some are citing here in this discussion: they are calculated on confirmed (tested) cases only. 3% is indeed a scary # compared to the regular flu; but the reality is that the majority of people who are exposed to the virus may be asymptomatic or manifest minor symptoms only, assume it for the regular flu and not seek out a test.
For example - because the majority of people experiencing flu-like symptoms don't typically seek medical attention, the CDC estimates the total # of cases to calculate mortality rates of regular flu:
Reports are generally only citing confirmed (tested) cases which are skewing the mortality calculations.
I agree with much of the article you shared, @armeck - it speaks to how rapidly new information is available, but it's worth noting that the WHO has indeed classified COVID-19 as a pandemic:
Yep, and this post will also likely be conveniently ignored by the Ivy leaguer and “sky is falling” crowd
Truth hurts, boomer. Your generation is immune from taking responsibility.
You're just a political hack. You haven't posted anything rational and have distorted everyone's words that don't fit your worldviews. The death rate is likely lower than 3.4% overall. Probably somewhere between 1-2% with the elderly and immunocompromised being hit hardest. Is your stance that high risk people dying is not a big deal? Does this virus becoming so widespread that it becomes endemic and we'll have to deal with it every year not concern you? Or is it all just fake news?
That was nasty. I saw it kill multiple healthy 30-40 year olds. That was a more lethal disease, but I don't think it was as contagious. It's the contagiousness of the corona virus that's got everyone so worked up. That's what grabbed my attention anyways. That and it's new. The Flu has been around. People have seen the flu before, their bodies have had some type of it before. Combine that with frequent vaccination and the public is better prepared to fight it off.
Grifters...