- 87,598
- Rule 12
- GTP_Famine
I wouldn't necessarily go that far, because...
It isn't.
COVID-19 is deadly, and where it isn't it can be life-changing. There will be people who die 5-10 years from now because of the multiple organ damage caused by COVID-19, and there are people right now who are clear of COVID-19 but are suffering from something extremely similar to Guillain–Barre - a previously highly rare post-viral syndrome. And these aren't elderly or vulnerable people, but otherwise healthy early middle-aged people.
While something like 90% of cases are mild to undetectable outside of testing*, the proportion of complications among those cases that are not mild is very high (~20%), and the death rate is very high (~4%)for a regular respiratory tract infection. The hospitalisation rate is of concern, because 20% of 250,000 people shipping up as inpatients at once will cause deaths from lack of treatment not only for them but for normal people who can't get treatment for other serious but ordinarily manageable conditions - and already half of people who end up in ICU with COVID-19 don't come out of it
Sure, if we get enough people tested we'll likely see that the odds of death are under 1% (if not 0.5%), and the odds of serious, life-changing consequences are under 5% (if not 2%) - it's no ebola, but it is not something you want to catch...
... but it's something it's relatively easy to avoid catching and even easier to avoid spreading. It's droplet spread, so masks (even home-made fabric ones) which prevent the droplets leaving your nose and mouth help reduce how much you can spread it if you have it, and which limit the major entry points from droplets help reduce how much you can catch it if you don't (eyes will be the remaining major entry point); improper use of masks, such as touching the exposed surfaces especially when taking them off and putting them on, will increase exposure but not outweigh the amount the masks themselves reduce it; it'll be roughly the same as any other item of clothing, especially outer layers. Washing of hands and common surfaces help reduce how much someone can transfer mouth-to-hand onto surfaces to spread it, and hand-to-mouth from surfaces to catch it. Keeping a few feet apart reduces the chance of ordinary respiratory droplets reaching other people - though coughs and sneezes can indeed still spread diseases.
It's basically not that hard to limit exposure. Of course it will be necessary for many people to drive, put fuel in their car, go to work, go to supermarkets, and so on, and that naturally increases exposure, but wearing a mask, washing your hands, and staying away from people limits how exposed you are - as well as limits how much you expose other people. Treating any surface you're not aware of as clean (including your clothing and mask) as if it is infected is a wise course.
But people don't want to do that. Some particularly stupid people treat wearing a mask as an assault on their rights (which is fun, because it fools the hell out of the facial recognition in CCTV) and don't see that protecting themselves from exposure also protects others from exposure to them from a virus they have a 90% chance of not knowing they even have...
If you've read my post on accurate COVID-19 reporting and come away with the conclusion that it is over-reported (and overblown), you're wrong. A "COVID-19 death" is not necessarily always a death from COVID-19, but it's someone who has at the least had SARS-CoV-2 - and that's very important to know. There is probably a vanishingly small number of the 46,000 or so people in the UK who are COVID-19 deaths who've been murdered, or committed suicide, or died in a car crash, or fallen out of a fifth-floor window and not actually died from COVID-19 while positive for the virus, or from the damage it has caused, and it's not likely to change the numbers enough to require a re-rounding.
The statistics are dumbed down a bit, and I think there's a few reasons for that. I'd record them as COVID with the primary cause of death, and COVID as a secondary cause of death except where trauma is the primary cause. Of course that would allow for some major spin on the death numbers, but it would at least be accurate. And we do need more testing.
*As with 'flu. At least half of all 'flu cases are mild enough to never even register, and at least 90% will be nothing more than someone taking a day off work - if we're lucky that they're bright enough to stay at home and not battle through it; our 'flu numbers are no more reliable.
