Most dangerous covid delta Delta in kids and adults: under 1% death
Again I’m not saying any deaths are acceptable here. But cmon.
Your numbers are very misleading because you're not taking the case numbers into consideration. In its worst year polio killed 3145 Americans and that prompted the largest vaccination program in history, leading to a 99% drop in polio cases within 3 years. In its worse year (so far) over 600,000 Americans have died of covid and vaccination efforts have stalled. You're comparing percentages, but a larger % of 58,000 polio cases doesn't come close to comparing to a smaller percentage of 37 million cases of covid.
Polio is the comparison because it's the most recent disease that a lot of people are aware of that was eliminated via vaccine (there was an interesting This American Life - https://www.thisamericanlife.org/71/defying-sickness - about a guy who still spent most of his days in an iron lung un the late 90's because of childhood polio). I don't think anyone's claiming that once you get COVID it's as dangerous as Polio. The comparison is being made because both diseases are deadly and yet ye all happily took vaccines for one and are refusing for the other.
Also, in the worst year of Polio ~.002% of the population died from it. ~.1% of the population died from COVID in a year-ish (I did some rough rounding, but it's certainly a larger percentage than polio by well over an order of magnitude). So for sheer numbers, COVID is "more dangerous" than Polio in that it's killed a higher percentage of the population and has killed more in absolute value. I assume this is because Polio was far less transmissible, but I don't really wanna do a deep dive into how Polio spread.
My percentages were the same - what percentage of the population died from the disease. If there's a disease with a 100% fatality rate, but the only way to get it is, say, literally licking someone's armpit, it will have an extremely low transmission rate. Then let's look at a disease that has, say a 5% transmission mortality rate but is incredibly contagious. Which is more deadly? How deadly a disease is is a combination of both transmissibility and mortality.
The Black Death had about a 50% fatality rate once contracted. The human version of mad cow disease is 100% fatal if you get it, but you have to eat tainted meat to get it and you can't spread it to other humans (as far as we know - I suppose if you ate a person who had it you would get it?) So which of these diseases is "more deadly?" I'd argue that the black death iscause it was easily transmissible (at the time) and killed 30% of the population of Europe, even though it only had a 50% mortality rate for those infected.
So yes, on a population level COVID is "more deadly" than Polio cause it kills more people (as a percentage of the population). Polio is "more deadly" once you get it, but you were far less likely to get it.
Edit - FWIW the CDC estimated about 32,000 people died from the flu in the 2018-2019 season, so ~.01% of the population, again an order of magnitude lower than COVID and that's with essentially minimal efforts to contain it.
Edit edit - had typed "transmission" when I meant "mortality"
Edit - FWIW the CDC estimated about 32,000 people died from the flu in the 2018-2019 season, so ~.01% of the population, again an order of magnitude lower than COVID and that's with essentially minimal efforts to contain it.
And the thing to keep in mind here is that the transmission rate of covid is being tracked at a time when huge percentages of the population are wearing masks, social distancing, sheltering in place, where many places are closed or open with restrictions etc. One of the most interesting comparisons is to be made is looking at what covid best-practices have done to the flu rates...the flu has virtually disappeared. There was a measure time period late last year/early this year (I think maybe something like November 2020 to February 2021) where the CDC usually records something like 130,000 flu cases but this flu season that number dropped to something like 1200 - the drop off was massive.
If we compare the known r-naught numbers for the flu and covid and extrapolate the impact of our covid-best practices on to the known covid cases and project the spread of covid without those practices we'd be looking at something like 8 million dead Americans.
Edit: Sorry, sloppy math - about 6 million dead Americans.
@Hatorian You keep saying you’re peacing out, but then you come back and start up again.
If you don’t mandate vaccines in some capacity - whether it’s governments, businesses, vaccine passports to get into places or to travel or whatever, you have a significant enough percentage of the population who will never do it, and we will have no chance of ever getting it down to manageable numbers or minimal symptoms, let alone eradication.
So if you’re so against the idea of mandating, what is your solution to this?
I said I was doing something better with my Friday. And I did and came back and started what was I thought a civil discussion with people allowed to have various beliefs.
if you’re saying my beliefs, different from yours, aren’t welcome here then that’s fine.
I deleted my comment and won’t make any more comments on covid. I’ll stick to what I some what know.
I don’t have solutions because it’s not my job. If you want a military historian. I’m your guy. If you want an amazing in person business man. That’s me. I can’t come up with stuff to fix this problem but I know federal level mandates ain’t they way.
I said I was doing something better with my Friday. And I did and came back and started what was I thought a civil discussion with people allowed to have various beliefs.
if you’re saying my beliefs, different from yours, aren’t welcome here then that’s fine.
I deleted my comment and won’t make any more comments on covid. I’ll stick to what I some what know.
Oh come on, where did I say they weren’t welcome? My point was you keep saying the same thing and that you don’t want to argue but you appear to want just that. And saying it’s not your job to offer a solution is a cop out. You have an opinion, you’re clearly not an idiot, you’ve clearly thought a lot about it and you clearly want to talk about it, but you never seem to get beyond step one of “I don’t agree with this.”
If you have alternative ideas then I’m sure everyone here would be very interested to hear and discuss them.
Lockdowns seemed to work. My recommendation would be elderly care lockdowns. Move risky kids(unvaccinated/immocomped) to virtual. All other adults need to be smart. Mask up in winter. Get the vaccine. Strick travel requirements like vaccines for staff.
What’s sad is after 17 months successfully keeping covid out of the most dangerous spots in Australia, it is arrived in local communities that have 0 ICUs!
Pray they have caught it before it got out of control.
Not trying to stoke any fires but I just found out my close uncle is a breakthrough case.
Caught it while having neck surgery.
he was also someone calling all the family members demanding them to get the vaccine. Not making any points here. Guess it doesn’t change the fact he had the right intent at heart.
I'm sorry to hear about your uncle, I hope he has a rapid recovery both from the surgery and from the COVID infection.
Situation only underscores why its so important for people to get vaccinated, not just individually, but as a society. While each individual benefits directly from getting vaccinated themselves, the effective benefit of the vaccine to the individual goes up the more people around them are vaccinated too.
@Hatorian The vaccine doesn’t stop you from catching it - in particular the Delta variant. It’s much less likely that you will you catch it, and vastly less likely that if you do catch it, you will be seriously ill (or die). It essentially turns it into a cold for the vast majority of people.
I am glad your uncle is okay, and that he was vaccinated so things were not worse for him.
Comments
adults: 15-30% death
Delta in kids and adults: under 1% death
Also, in the worst year of Polio ~.002% of the population died from it. ~.1% of the population died from COVID in a year-ish (I did some rough rounding, but it's certainly a larger percentage than polio by well over an order of magnitude). So for sheer numbers, COVID is "more dangerous" than Polio in that it's killed a higher percentage of the population and has killed more in absolute value. I assume this is because Polio was far less transmissible, but I don't really wanna do a deep dive into how Polio spread.
but then compare it to polio.
why not the same thing for Covid
The Black Death had about a 50% fatality rate once contracted. The human version of mad cow disease is 100% fatal if you get it, but you have to eat tainted meat to get it and you can't spread it to other humans (as far as we know - I suppose if you ate a person who had it you would get it?) So which of these diseases is "more deadly?" I'd argue that the black death iscause it was easily transmissible (at the time) and killed 30% of the population of Europe, even though it only had a 50% mortality rate for those infected.
So yes, on a population level COVID is "more deadly" than Polio cause it kills more people (as a percentage of the population). Polio is "more deadly" once you get it, but you were far less likely to get it.
Edit - FWIW the CDC estimated about 32,000 people died from the flu in the 2018-2019 season, so ~.01% of the population, again an order of magnitude lower than COVID and that's with essentially minimal efforts to contain it.
Edit edit - had typed "transmission" when I meant "mortality"
If we compare the known r-naught numbers for the flu and covid and extrapolate the impact of our covid-best practices on to the known covid cases and project the spread of covid without those practices we'd be looking at something like 8 million dead Americans.
Edit: Sorry, sloppy math - about 6 million dead Americans.
no hard feelings on my side. Just discussing shit.
if you’re saying my beliefs, different from yours, aren’t welcome here then that’s fine.
Caught it while having neck surgery.
he was also someone calling all the family members demanding them to get the vaccine. Not making any points here. Guess it doesn’t change the fact he had the right intent at heart.
UK did 8-12 weeks between doses. Israel did 3-4. I've seen this hypothesized as a possible reason for the disparity.
That said, more data is needed.