To Think People Have No Idea How Covid Messaging Has Changed

[Sunshineguy]

The CDC, HHS, and WHO are warning that Covid infections can get progressively worse and that the risk of Long Covid increases with each reinfection. Are people aware of this change in messaging?

That’s exactly what I am doing @rainydaysandwednesdays. I asked that question because so many posters were implying there was lots we could do and I was genuinely puzzled as to what that could be.

apparently it’s to lobby (who?) for better ventilation in public buildings (how?), open windows on buses (when if you never use a bus), wear a mask at the doctors (fair enough I guess) and don’t go out with Covid (even if you don’t know you have it!). So yeah, I’m not sure really.

@Rispa42 sorry to hear you're suffering. It's horrible isn't it. Fingers crossed all the research comes up with something useful for us soon!

@Ginmonkeyagain ive never had it to my knowledge and I work in healthcare, when we stopped wearing masks last summer I was in with someone that we didn’t know had and they were directly coughing all over me and I never got it. I honestly think there is something in the T cell thing they floated at the start but got shut down. I would have had to have been asymptotic as well as haven’t been unwell in that time really either and we were testing all the time

'Could it be vaccine damage? The horrid pesticides peppered on all of our food? Something else?'

Maybe, but something has got to get you, right?

Yes, actually

someone quoted 700,000 million cases and 7 million deaths = 1% fatality however the population of the world is 7 billion this would mean only 10% of the population have ever had covid however mild

@Cottagecheeseisnotcheese thankyou for looking at the numbers. They allow for 10 percent of the population having it once. We know a majority have had it more then once so that makes the 1 percent claim even more of a nonsense.

@OceanicBoundlessness it may have been 1% right at the beginning when no treatment or not sure what treatments work best no vaccines and no testing unless a medic or very ill
it is thought that 80% of the population have had covid at least once since start of pandemic
there are 7.88 bllion people in the world 80% of that is approx 6.3 billion and 7 million deaths is a fatality rate of 0.11% which equates to 1 death for every 900 people infected not 1 in every 100 this is a huge huge difference
I am not trying to minimise Covid, 1 in 900 is still a risk, it is not nothing but trying to make out it is worse than it is not good either.
you have to weigh this against general causes of death and how much worse it is than others. I have said several times upthread that mathematically within the UK the statistics show it is 2-3 times worse than flu at very worst, as due to the testing regime the number of flu cases is likely to have been underestimated as it is not tested for as much, this is clearly stated on gov.uk and office for national statistics
in the world picture fatality rates are much higher in Western world as the population is so much older, the average age in UK is 42, compared to early 20's in places like Africa and Iran etc

You are taking that 1% out of context. The comparison was between flu and covid. Flu has a death rate of around 0.01% and covid of around 1% ( without vaccine)

Covid is around 100x more dangerous than flu.

both the death rate, and the rate at which suffers are left disabled is around 100x higher

it is thought that 80% of the population have had covid at least once since start of pandemic
there are 7.88 bllion people in the world 80% of that is approx 6.3 billion and 7 million deaths is a fatality rate of 0.11% which equates to 1 death for every 900 people infected not 1 in every 100 this is a huge huge difference

Cottage cheese, I wasn't disagreeing with you. If 6.3 billion people have had COVID that !=cases given that a large proportion will have had it more than once. Your numbers are a good starting point for explaining why 1 percent fatality rate is a nonsense but likely to be quite a conservative estimate of cases.

Keeping an eye on ventilation everywhere I have any control over it, which is course isn't everywhere, but that's an important one. Wearing inexpensive ffp2 masks for medical appointments, in shops and on public transport, to at least greatly reduce the amount of virus I breathe in if there's someone there breathing it out (so illness may be milder). In winter, supporting pubs and restaurants that do takeaways, and instead eating out mostly in the summer, when I can sit outdoors.

Those are some of the things I do. I don't care whether or not you do the same, but for me living with covid is trying to avoid getting it more times than I have to.

@OceanicBoundlessness I knew you were not disgreeing with me

world wide approx 400,000 people die per year from seasonal influenza
it has now been 4 years since outbreak of covid and there have been 7 million deaths over the same period on average there would have been 1.6million deaths from seasonal flu this points to covid being approx 4.4 times more likely to result in death not 100 times
the 2022 death statistics ( England and Wales) have 46,000 having covid on death certificate and 15,000 having seasonal flu this again follows worldwide figures with covid deaths being approx 3 times that of flu deaths.
both have vaccines which help both mainly affect the elderly rather than the young ( though the young are much more likely to die of flu than covid )
the very last graph on this site shows this quite clearly
https://ourworldindata.org/influenza-deaths
it also shows the risk of death from SARS. Covid Flu and Mers as being very similar in the over 65's

we are talking about death rates, not liklihood of causing death! this isn't an opinion, or a point of discussion, it is a simple fact - covid has a death rate at least 100x higher that flu.

@notknowledgeable your maths is very faulty even with your own stats in picture above
7 million covid deaths over a 4 year period
flu deaths 290,000 -650,000 yearly so over 4 years 1.16-2.6million
the difference in your own figures with lowest rate of flu deaths is 6 times and with highest rate of flu deaths just under 3 times
not a 100 times

@notknowledgeable even if you mistook the 650,000 deaths as happening over the same period as the 7 million the difference is 10 times not 100 times

https://www.theguardian.com/society/2024/mar/15/long-covid-symptoms-flu-cold

The new message is not what you have said. The new message is that the risk of long Covid increases with each re infection.