[blueash]

Originally Posted by Cheiro

During the Great Flu of 1918, there was no such thing as social distancing or even a vaccine. So, the disease was free to infect virtually everyone in the world and everyone got sick. ...

One of the history lessons used to support the use of social distancing, in fact, was the success of social distancing in the 1918 flu. While the organism causing that pandemic was not identified, it was apparent that it spread from person to person especially in closed spaces. You might click any of the hits on this

spanish flu social distancing - Google Search

One dramatic example comes from Philadelphia where it was decided to hold a patriotic parade whereas for example St. Louis cancelled their parade.

National Geographic did a nice job explaining how social distancing seems to have help during 1918 including graphs showing at least in some cities how relaxing the rules too soon may have led to an upturn in new cases. I did scratch my head a bit at one sentence " This allowed time for vaccine development and lessened the strain on health care systems" The first flu vaccine was experimentally available in the late 1930's. I'm not sure helped anyone in the 1918 pandemic.

[C. C. Rider]

Originally Posted by huange@verizon.net

CDC Data for the U.S -2017
Leading Causes of Death:
Heart disease: 647,457.
Cancer: 599,108.
Accidents (unintentional injuries): 169,936.
Chronic lower respiratory diseases: 160,201.
Stroke (cerebrovascular diseases): 146,383.
Alzheimer's disease: 121,404.
Diabetes: 83,564.
Influenza and pneumonia: 55,672.
More items...
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention › nchs › fastats

The reason the above deaths did not get the mass hysteria is because the deaths were spread out over an entire year (2017). I speculate that Covid-19 deaths will be less than from influenza and pneumonia, but because of the condensed time frame of the virus outbreak, there’s a need to spread out the cases.

That's 2 Million deaths per year just in the categories you listed. And the majority of those deaths listed would be considered as "immune compromised" categories which is precisely the ones that are most susceptible to dying from coronavirus.

So, I think it is reasonable to conclude that the TOTAL number of deaths in the US this year may not be much more than an ordinary year. It's just that the cause of death on the death certificate will say "Coronavirus" instead of "Heart Disease", "Cancer", "Diabetes", etc.

[Starfire]

Originally Posted by OrangeBlossomBaby

Just make sure to write your obit before locking yourself in a school gym with all your pals who are willing to sacrifice themselves for the sake of humanity.

I for one would prefer not to get sick in the first place, than to get sick and risk death while hoping to recover and become immune.

Everyone will get sick (unless you permanently become a hermit). It is just a matter of time (like the Flu). Current policy is to keep as many people alive as possible by not overloading the health care system. Hard to argue with that concept.

[C. C. Rider]

Originally Posted by HelenLCSW

You are right —if we had all listened to those experts and immediately self isolated, we would be ahead of the curve, not behind it😔

If you look at those two curves (the high short one and the low long one), you'll see that the area under the curve represents the number of people killed. Both curves have approximately the same area under the curve. It's just that in one case the deaths will be grouped in a shorter time span than the other one.

[Mary Windsor]

And where do you imagine you’d find space for all of us with serious underlying serious medical conditions? How many states would we need to inhabit? How many folks would be willing to leave their homes and businesses so we ‘vulnerable’ people could move in to be isolated from everyone else?
I’m sorry, there are soo many flaws in this kind of thinking! Of course, there’s always the train of thought that we’re expendable anyway since we’re already either old, sick, or disabled. 😳😱
There’s no easy solution, no magic cure, so let’s all try to care about each other, observe the social distancing recommendations, and pray that the scientists will come up with therapeutics and a vaccine since we’re likely to see a recurrence of this virus in a mutated form. The pill may be bitter to swallow, but the cure will be worth waiting for, if not for ourselves, but for the generations who follow.
May God keep each and everyone safe!

[jfkilduff]

Although I agree with your logic I think you should make a NUMBERED prediction on the folks your idea would actually kill and if you would be one of the dead.

Originally Posted by C. C. Rider

I know there are many threads on the coronavirus problem, but please allow me to start one to discuss just one specific aspect of this. I recently read in another thread here a comment to the effect that if we will just stick rigorously to our social distancing practices and practice good handwashing and the like, that we will be over this problem quicker.

While that may sound logical and correct, I don't believe that it is. In fact, if you will recall, the whole idea behind shutting things down and maintaining social distancing was to drag this process out for many months so as not to have too many cases at one time which would overwhelm our hospital resources. In other words, we wanted to "flatten" the curve, not have a short, sharp, high curve.

The quickest way to be rid of the CV problem would be to make no changes in our everyday habits, let people catch the virus, and then have about 99% of them recover and thereby build herd immunity rather quickly. The problem with this approach is that fatalities would likely be higher in the near term because the number of seriously ill patients would overwhelm our hospital system.

So, the powers that be chose the approach that would drag this situation out for a much longer period of time. While this approach would likely be easier to handle from a healthcare perspective, it will undoubtedly extend the time that we are dealing with the disease to a much, much longer period of time.

The drawback to this approach is that the disease doesn't really go away, it just spreads at a much slower rate and therefore takes a much longer period of time for our country to build a sizeable herd immunity. If we were able to go about our ordinary lives while slowing down the spread of the virus, that would be great, but unfortunately we can't.

So, I don't mean to be the bearer of bad news, but I'm concerned that this "social distancing" and shutting down of all non-essential businesses may be with us a LOT longer than many people think. In fact, the better we are at self distancing, the longer the situation will likely last.

So it appears that we either stay the course for many months or resume life as usual in a few weeks and see a rapid return of many sick people. The only bright light that I can see in the "slow" approach that was chosen is that it may buy us some time in the hopes that a cure may be found quickly. I certainly hope so.

There is one other alternative, but it's not popular in many circles... and that is to isolate the most vulnerable (the aged, the immune compromised, etc) and let the rest of the country go back to work. Personally, that's the approach that I think should have been taken from the start, but many people think otherwise.

I hope everyone stays well. I just wanted to present the choices as I see them.

Thanks

[C. C. Rider]

Originally Posted by Mary Windsor

And where do you imagine you’d find space for all of us with serious underlying serious medical conditions? How many states would we need to inhabit? How many folks would be willing to leave their homes and businesses so we ‘vulnerable’ people could move in to be isolated from everyone else?

How about in your own home? If it's going to work for the "social distancing" plan, it should work for the "Isolate the Vulnerable" plan. However, if you're currently sleeping on a sidewalk in a cardboard box, then you might have a problem with either plan.

[Drdoug49]

Originally Posted by Topspinmo

They wear masks cause the live in over populated ____ hole. They are slimmer cause they have little to eat after they ravaged land and sea. Riding around is carts HAS NOTHING to do with it. Majority of population NOT part of the elite like you, they are surviving. But, you probably live in the 1% area right?

Asia has made substantial increases in their standard of living, so your characterization is false. In regards to the overweight TV , the average Korean women weighs 125lbs, the average American women weighs 168lbs.

[Rooklift]

1% of 350 million is 3.5 million dead .... is that what you want ?

[BettyBoop1952]

That's the approach that Sweden is taking.

[bumpygreens]

Originally Posted by Cheiro

During the Great Flu of 1918, there was no such thing as social distancing or even a vaccine. So, the disease was free to infect virtually everyone in the world and everyone got sick. The result was the death of 50 million people which amounted to 1/5 of the population. Today that statistic would translate to 1,400,000,000 (1.4 Billion) deaths. Do I hear any volunteers?

The population of the world in 1918 was about 1.8 billion. 50 million people amounts to about 2.7 percent of the population. Translated to today that would mean about 200 million people.

[golfing eagles]

Originally Posted by Rooklift

1% of 350 million is 3.5 million dead .... is that what you want ?

Which assume 100% of the population (more like 330 million) get infected, which never happens. Then you assume a 1% mortality rate, which is true at the moment, but if we tested everyone (not practical), that rate would be quite a bit lower. Still serious and tragic, but not the end of the world

[JoMar]

So happy that the OP isn't making the decisions that would most likely kill me.

[miharris]

Current prediction for total deaths in the US by IHME is 87k

[golfing eagles]

Originally Posted by miharris

Current prediction for total deaths in the US by IHME is 87k

or about 20% more than a bad flu season. A lot of predictions are in the 120-200,000 range, but still not the end of the world