Mega-Thread: Coronavirus Pandemic

[Kiri]

There is a point when it does become "a flu" though. You can only have people wait so many months/years for a vaccine/treatment that does or doesn't work. When that point is reached, covid becomes a flu with different mortality numbers.
After that - "it is what it is", life goes on.
Like it always has.

There certainly is, of course. We will have to live with and some residual danger at some point, that is just the nature of things.
The main difference here is mostly that people cannot truly agree on where that point is, exactly. For some of us, it is still quite a few weeks or even months of carefully adjusting and reopening away. For others, it was four months ago already.
I am fairly sure that most people here want to return to some level of normalcy - it won't be a true normal again until we have a vaccine, but a lot of people seem to still reject that notion. Some of us are just willing to do so more slowly, carefully, in order to keep as many people safe as possible. Others want to do it asap and don't care as much about keeping as many people safe as possible. These are simply differences in preferences, utility, all that good stuff.
Problem just comes from when one side goes and says "your point is invalid, we got to do it my way, so take it and shut up".

[unfilteredJW]

Yeah, I'm sure it varies from person to person, but I can say that I'd never be able to accurately know my own without actually using a thermometer. When I caught the flu back in December, I actually held off for a day or so on going to get checked because I felt like I didn't have a fever (just touching my forehead, didn't have a thermometer) and just decided I'd try to sleep it off. Felt worse the next day (but still didn't feel like a had a fever) and when I went to a walk-in clinic, they found out I was running 102.5 and tasted me positive for flu.

And it's weird because they are so inexpensive and everyone should have one.

[PhaelixWW]

Now imagine the trouble Columbus must have had explaining Isabella of Castlle that the world was round. All we know is that he first tried to seek the help of king John II of Portugal and he refused to budget his expedition (but we all know that John II had acces to other information).

What are you even talking about anymore? Did you not even read what you quoted? The fact that the earth was round was common knowledge by the time Columbus was making his pitch to Queen Isabella.

What point are you even trying to make with this?

That's not what you are doing at all, you actually have alredy dennyed same scientific facts, stuff like the fact that no other coronavirus has ever hited herd imunity, not the original Sars-cov, not Mers-cov and most cold coronaviruses don't hit herd imunity normally.

No, see, this is just an example of you not understanding the facts. MERS has an inherent R0 less than 1, so it was never in real danger of becoming a widespread pandemic. SARS was much less contagious prior to the onset of symptoms and the infections were much more apparent (very few asymptomatic cases), which means that it was much, much easier to contain. And the other coronaviruses that cause the common cold? They sure as heck do hit their herd immunity threshold. It's just that the R0 for those viruses only rises above 1 during the "flu season", and barely. The truth is that, with an immunity that lasts ~2 years, and the potential for cross-immunity between the different versions of cold-causing human coronaviruses, we're at a near-constant state of herd immunity.

All we know is that sars-cov-2 might just disapear even before a vaccine is made. It's a low chance, but there is some scientifical background for that.

That's hardly "all we know", no. And it's an exceedingly low chance, based on the nature of this virus. If we were going to have a chance to eradicate this virus, it would have happened before it spread across the globe.

Or you actually venture to the unexplored unknow, like Columbus, like JFK with his famous sentence the we would arrive to the moon in 10 years (no had ever managed to hit escape velocity of Earth's orbit before, back then it was mostly assumed to be impossible)

Uh, not really. The first man-made object to break free of the earth's gravity was back in 1957, almost 5 years before that speech. I don't think anyone who knew the science thought it was impossible, merely some degree of improbable with the current levels of technology at the time. It was not in direct contravention of any scientific knowledge.

At this time we are researching vaccines, no other vaccine in mankind history taked less then 4 years to be developed, but in any other time before we had so much research for a single vaccine as we have this time. I think we will have a vaccine within the next year, if not severall, but some people here keep saying no, we can't because it has never been done before. How about looking back to Columbus, Bartolomeu Dias, Vasco da Gama or even JFK more recently, they proved the impossible was actually possible.

They didn't prove that the impossible was possible; that's just pure sophistry. They discovered the unknown, or did the improbable, but not impossible.

Look, both extremes are wrong, here. There's no guarantee that we will have a working, safe vaccine in a year. There's likewise no guarantee that we won't. The truth is that we have so many different ones in the works that there's a pretty decent chance that one of them will succeed within 2 years. That may not do us any good for this first go-through of this novel virus, but if it's like other coronaviruses and confers an immunity for at least 2 years, then it should help us avoid successive reinfection waves after that immunity wanes.

That is exactly what i have been doing, but some people here keep focusing themselves only on the worst scenario...

There is a lot of room for being optimistic and keep hope.

There's nothing wrong with optimism and hope, per se, but you're labeling anything that doesn't conform to your optimism and hope to be "the worse scenario", which is just outright ridiculous.

The truth is in the middle, and I'll keep fighting for a fact- and reality-based approach to this.

- - - Updated - - -

More evidences about the use of masks.
https://www.france24.com/en/20200517...ead-scientists

Did the hamsters use physical distancing?

[xenogear3]

WHO warns of second wave. I forgot, do we listen to WHO today or not?

Scare people. That is how it got funding.

[Granyala]

More evidences about the use of masks.
https://www.france24.com/en/20200517...ead-scientists

SURGICAL masks. Not the homebrew nonsense everyone is running around with.

Using scarfs etc makes me laugh.

[ranzino]

still wonder how Columbus did miss the simple fact the distance between europe and asia was way above his league, given the limited supplies. earth's circumference was known since Erathostenes and therefore >1700 years before Columbus set sail. so how did he expect to reach india ?

[stevenho]

I am fairly sure that most people here want to return to some level of normalcy - it won't be a true normal again until we have a vaccine, but a lot of people seem to still reject that notion.

It is good to have hope, but it is better to prepare for the scenario of no vaccine for years/ever or a limited effectiveness one. I'm fairly sure that's more likely than a fully effective vaccine within a year.

[Tuor]

No, see, this is just an example of you not understanding the facts. MERS has an inherent R0 less than 1, so it was never in real danger of becoming a widespread pandemic. SARS was much less contagious prior to the onset of symptoms and the infections were much more apparent (very few asymptomatic cases), which means that it was much, much easier to contain. And the other coronaviruses that cause the common cold? They sure as heck do hit their herd immunity threshold. It's just that the R0 for those viruses only rises above 1 during the "flu season", and barely. The truth is that, with an immunity that lasts ~2 years, and the potential for cross-immunity between the different versions of cold-causing human coronaviruses, we're at a near-constant state of herd immunity.

Both sars and mers just disapeared out of the radar, hopefully we know why sars disapeared, he started to loose genetic material before he disapeared. Has for sars-cov-2, there is already a case of someone living in arizona were the same thing happened. Sadly its only a single case and we can't take any conclusions.

That's hardly "all we know", no. And it's an exceedingly low chance, based on the nature of this virus. If we were going to have a chance to eradicate this virus, it would have happened before it spread across the globe.

Or we can do it brute force, my hometown didn't had a single case in more the a week, same thing is happening in small towns all over europe, small territories have already erradicated it, and the infection numbers are getting lower. The virus is getting more localised. I think in a year we can erradicate this thing out, well at least until a second wave hits us, which will give us some time for the vaccine.

Uh, not really. The first man-made object to break free of the earth's gravity was back in 1957, almost 5 years before that speech. I don't think anyone who knew the science thought it was impossible, merely some degree of improbable with the current levels of technology at the time. It was not in direct contravention of any scientific knowledge.

I was wron, has much as you are, it was Luna 1 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luna_1

They didn't prove that the impossible was possible; that's just pure sophistry. They discovered the unknown, or did the improbable, but not impossible.

There is a portuguese book calle ''Os Lusiadas'' read and you might get inside the mind of a XVI century guy.

For those people, venturing outside europe was pretty much impossible if it wasn't the mind of some people like Henry the Navigator.

Look, both extremes are wrong, here. There's no guarantee that we will have a working, safe vaccine in a year. There's likewise no guarantee that we won't. The truth is that we have so many different ones in the works that there's a pretty decent chance that one of them will succeed within 2 years. That may not do us any good for this first go-through of this novel virus, but if it's like other coronaviruses and confers an immunity for at least 2 years, then it should help us avoid successive reinfection waves after that immunity wanes.

Then let's trust in the scientists work.

Did the hamsters use physical distancing?

Well, aren't you that claimed for science?

[Forogil]

still wonder how Columbus did miss the simple fact the distance between europe and asia was way above his league, given the limited supplies. earth's circumference was known since Erathostenes and therefore >1700 years before Columbus set sail. so how did he expect to reach india ?

He obviously thought it was smaller - one theory is that it was a bit of confusion regarding units.

However, to me the more obvious question are:
1. Why didn't he consider the possibility of discovering something new?
One explanation by Wootton in "The Invention of Science" is that people back then didn't have the mindset of considering the possibility rediscovering something that wasn't discovered before (if you find that phrase weird read the book), and something about how Earth and Water was supposed to be.

Do we have similar gaps in our current assumptions?

2. How could he convince the court to fund it when all scholars could tell them it wouldn't work?
The obvious reason is that the potential treasure to be had from sea-route to India made them ignore sound advice. Are modern rulers any wiser, or are people scamming them during the current pandemic?

[Pohut]

'Coronavirus did NOT come from animals in Wuhan market': Landmark study suggests it was taken into the area by someone already infected - as Beijing thwarts efforts to establish source of Covid-19

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/art...an-market.html

[Forogil]

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/art...an-market.html

The actual article, https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...05.01.073262v1 is not peer-reviewed; and the suggestion is that it first jumped from an animal to humans and then adapted more to human-human transmission before getting to the wet market (since there are no signs of earlier less human-adapted variants).

It doesn't imply that any lab was involved - but suggests that there is some animal with a pre-cursor variant that we haven't found (we already knew that); but the new part is that may have been far from the wet market (if a human brought the adapted virus there). It doesn't exonerate the wet-market as it's still possible that someone got infected while hunting for the wet-market.

[szechuan]

Yes, they are. People die every day and we continue our lives as if nothing happened.
I didn't see you make a fuss about your annually 60K flu dead in the years before, so don't act all emotional now.

Again, because people have done mostly what they could for the Flu, this is entirely different.

Once we figure out how to achieve a realistic and sustainable level of safety, coexistence with SARS-CoV-2 will become a reality and people will stop to care.
Just as they stopped caring about the flu dead.

It's not just about Sustainability either it's also about Minimizing Death.

Right now we're in the process of determining what we need to do and what we can afford not to do in regards to disease control and risk management.

And America is completely failing in this.

[stevenho]

Again, because people have done mostly what they could for the Flu, this is entirely different.

Not even close.
People could wear masks, lock themselves down and practice social distancing to minimize flu infections and deaths.
But they didn't.

[szechuan]

Not even close.
People could wear masks, lock themselves down and practice social distancing to minimize flu infections and deaths.
But they didn't.

Wrong.

Society did in fact wear masks, lock themselves down and practice social distancing to minimize flu infections, without a Vaccine.

And you're constantly being Disingenuous and Obtuse and seems to Shill for Herd Immunity without a Vaccine.

[Puupi]

Sweden has run out of propofol (drug used in anesthesia). Norway is giving them an emergency supply aid for now.

https://www.dn.se/nyheter/sverige/no...-till-sverige/

[Strawberry]

No it's how diseases work. They are scary that's why we take them seriously.

Last time I checked, life didn't evolve being under a lockdown.

[Maneo]

Just curious how long the "We must stay locked down" folks think we should stay locked down?

[stevenho]

Society did in fact wear masks, lock themselves down and practice social distancing to minimize flu infections, without a Vaccine.

Oh so the tens of thousands of yearly flu deaths don't warrant any measures because "there is a vaccine".
Sounds smart.
How is it working out for all the dead people?

[szechuan]

Oh so the tens of thousands of yearly flu deaths don't warrant any measures because "there is a vaccine".
Sounds smart.

Herd Immunity with a Vaccine is smart.

[Demolitia]

Herd Immunity with a Vaccine is smart.

Herd immunity without is manslaughter.