"Only the elderly/immune suppressed are at risk" - attitude of dicks?

[SylvanianFrenemies]

People who say not to worry about Coronavirus, because "Only the elderly/chronically ill/immune suppressed" are dicks.

Some of us fall into these categories. Some love people who fall into these categories. Some have some essence of humanity. Stop using "Only the xxx" to dismiss concerns. Stop conflating it with flu.

Wash your hands. Isolate yourself as required. Err on the side of caution.

YABU = I agree with these dicks.
YANBU = I am human.

Copy/pasted from a previous thread.

Made a picture to illustrate the problem with the way death rates are being reported.

I've seen multiple people addressing this already, but thought maybe a graphical form would be easier for getting the point across (for my own DH if no one else!)

Basically we're being told the death rate is around 2% because they're counting the number of people who've died out of everyone who's been confirmed infected - including those people that are still infected right now.

However, what you really want to know is how many people recover vs how many die - and this paints a different picture (9% deaths as of today's numbers).

Someone gives you a packet of 100 seeds. After a day, 10 have sprouted, and 1 of these is a poisonous mushroom.

Can you really say that only 1 in a packet will be a poisonous mushroom? No, because 90 of the seeds haven't sprouted yet!

Yes, mushrooms grow from spores rather than seeds

The problem as I see it is that we have two extreme scenarios.

A: the UK manages to contain it and the numbers remain in the hundreds rather than thousands

B: the UK doesn't manage to contain it, it becomes widespread with 60% of the population affected.

Scenario A is great. However, it's the complacency of people believing in scenario A which is most likely to lead to Scenario B. The 'I'm alright Jack's'. Those who continue to fly to Northern Italy now for example. Those who refuse to self isolate. Those who go into work coughing and spluttering over everyone saying 'it's just a cold'.

For all the people who don't have an underlying health condition, how do know you don't have an underlying health condition?

Many health conditions are unknown, until they are exposed by illness. I would hate people to discover they have issues with their heart or something as a result of Corona virus.

You have more chance of being killed in a car accident than dying from coronavirus.

Total shite. Deaths from Coronavirus (so far) stand at 2867. That's more than the number of people killed on UK roads in the last 12 months by quite some way, and those deaths are only since December 2019. Imagine how much higher that figure could be by December 2020.

@LochJessMonster Yes and China has taken extreme measures to stop the spread of this virus. That will not happen here or in Europe. So you really cannot compare what happened in China with here.

janemaster I think you've chose to read into some of the comments a bit too literally, btw the comment your referring too actually came from someone who is immunocompromised themselves and was talking about their own individual circumstance

No flower there have been multiple comments.

woodchuck99 hey you were the one who decided to bring up the Spanish flu to attempt to back your point up about if the young were to die. I'm just responding with the facts

FudgeBrownie2019 that's not in the UK though so isnt a comparable figure...

they you were the one who decided to bring up the Spanish flu to attempt to back your point up about if the young were to die. I'm just responding with the facts

You didn't respond with the fact. You said I should do research into vaccines and healthcare now versus then.

woodchuck you asked me what I meant by saying it was in 1918...I then explained to you why that's relevant

The risk of dying in a car crash in the UK in any one year is 1 in 20,000. Yes the lifetime risk is far higher. Nut most people are way more likely to be killed by the virus this year than to die in a car crash.

Why has the UK disappeared from that coronavirus map?

you asked me what I meant by saying it was in 1918...I then explained to you why that's relevant

Considering we don't have a vaccine or treatment for this anymore than they did for the flu in 1918 I'm not sure why your fact was relevant.

@ElizabethMountbatten They understood why the Spanish Flu killed healthy young people most and can use that to fight infections in the future.

Yes, but with regard to the car crash data, those COVID-19 deaths didn't happen in the UK, so why compare data for UK road traffic accidents to global death statistics? Globally, according to my first google, it's estimated that 3,700 people die every day in a road collision of some kind. The WHO esimates over 250,000 RTA deaths in China in 2018. So at the moment it looks as if your chance of dying of this virus even in China is indeed lower than your chance of being killed in an RTA. Though of course your chance of being killed in an RTA is much lower in the UK than in China, so a real comparison is impossible at the moment.

China is an enormous country, larger than Europe. The virus has not spread to most of China.

The virus has spread to every province in China. Look at the WHO situation reports for data on daily cases in each province.

ElizabethMountbatten seriously?

There are large areas in China with no or very few cases.

woodchuck99 because you said it killed 500 million...I was pointing out reasons to why this figure may have been so high, particularly in young people....

But FudgeBrownie2019 63,000 plus people die in traffic accidents in China each year! 1.4 billion people live in China!

You're not just comparing apples with oranges, more raisins with elephants...

Worst case scenario.

60% of the population in the UK contract it.

66.44 million (2018) is the population of the UK.
60% of that is approx 40 million.

Lets assume a 2 % death rate?

That leaves 792,000 dead in the UK.

Compared to the 1700 odd dead from road traffic accidents that I reported above.

Do you see now why we can't be complacent?

If my maths are incorrect, please correct me.

woodchuck99 the flu epidemic was particularly deadly in 1918 because so many people were malnourished and exhausted after four years of WW1.