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Originally Posted by skarra
Where is the more recent data for an order of magnitude (10 times) less? Please provide a reference as I'd like to see that. Dr Birx gave a 2.2M number just last week so I'd like to know who disputes that and what their credentials are (certainly not as good as Dr Birx who is the most reputable person in that field)
The choice is between being able to treat people in hospitals, and being overwhelmed and letting people die who ordinarily would have had a good chance of surviving. Flatten the curve and we can save many more lives. It's a fallacy to believe that the economy would continue as normal as people were dying around us.
There are lessons to be learned from the 1918-1920 epidemic. This is probably going to last a while unless we are fortunate and develop a vaccine quickly. Anything we do to buy time is helpful. Data will also help.
The TV commercial was a bad analogy. The choice is get it now with limited medical resources and little data, or later with ample medical care and plenty of data. I'd chose the later in a heartbeat and I'm not in the "vulnerable" risk group.
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There was no vaccine for the 1918 epidemic. It just eventually burned itself out and went away.
I’ve read a report by a doctor in New Orleans that says that about 80% of the people out on respirators there die on them. Only about 20% get well enough to breathe on their own again, and some of them will have brain damage. (Before people are put onto respirators, they are given anesthesia and their muscles are relaxed so they don’t fight the endotracheal tube, and they are kept that way for the duration, so if they die on the respirator, they don’t even know it.) The ones most likely to die are those with pre-existing conditions. If we had the guts, we could make it nation-wide policy that those with pre-existent conditions who need a respirator get only palliative care in a special unit (like a gymnasium). Then there would be no shortage of respirators for those who might survive, and a much larger percentage of those put on a respirator would survive it.
Sorry to be morbid.