The Hill: The data is in - stop the panic, end the total isolation

[Bt1 5,213]

I know there are a lot of The Hill fans here. This is for you. 

Article was written by : Scott W. Atlas, MD, is the David and Joan Traitel Senior Fellow at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution and the former chief of neuroradiology at Stanford University Medical Center.

[Franz Ferdinand 2,359]

Yikes. The data are in? Facts 2, 3, and 5 in the article have no basis on current data, what is this...

[Morphine Prince 109,729]

I don’t need to say it  

[Chromatican 4,046]

This article is bs. Yes, not all people are at risk of DYING from covid-19, but even having a significant portion of the population contract it would overwhelm our healthcare system. And older people aren’t the only ones at risk of dying. Immunocompromised people are a larger segment than you’d think and are at huge risk. 

[Chromatican 4,046]

Americans cannot handle negative emotions at ALL. 

[Maleficent 6]

Hopefully it ends like the Spanish Flu: 

"After the lethal second wave struck in late 1918, new cases dropped abruptly – almost to nothing after the peak in the second wave. In Philadelphia, for example, 4,597 people died in the week ending 16 October, but by 11 November, influenza had almost disappeared from the city. " 

"The 1918 virus mutated extremely rapidly to a less lethal strain. This is a common occurrence with influenza viruses: there is a tendency for pathogenic viruses to become less lethal with time, as the hosts of more dangerous strains tend to die out"

[CautiousLurker 19,733]

I want to lmao this so bad 
Curse those pesky succulent pancakes 

[Maleficent 6]

17 minutes ago, Franz Ferdinand said:

Yikes. The data are in? Facts 2, 3, and 5 in the article have no basis on current data, what is this...

Fact 2: . For those under 18 years of age, hospitalization from the virus is 0.01 percent per 100,000 people; for those 18 to 44 years old, hospitalization is 0.1 percent per 100,000. Even for people ages 65 to 74, only 1.7 percent were hospitalized.

Fact 3: We do not currently have herd immunity to the coronavirus? So...idgi what you're saying? 

Fact 5: The numbers show older people are at risk...? How is that not a fact

[Maleficent 6]

Scott W. Atlas, MD, is the David and Joan Traitel Senior Fellow at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution and the former chief of neuroradiology at Stanford University Medical Center.

@Florin put his credentials in the OP, i think theyre important!

[TimisaMonster 31,073]

The embarrassment to professional journalism...

[StarstruckIllusion 53,580]

56 minutes ago, Florin said:

I know there are a lot of The Hill fans here. This is for you. 

Wow you really did sumn 😳 Lemme go back to stanning the news channel who pushes election losing ideas + defends rich degenerates 🤩

Anyway, this opinion is trash, stream The Rising ever weekday @ 10:30am where the hosts would never agree with this... but some here wouldn’t know that bc they could never last past five minutes into one video without rage quitting 💕

 

[Franz Ferdinand 2,359]

48 minutes ago, Maleficent said:

Fact 2: . For those under 18 years of age, hospitalization from the virus is 0.01 percent per 100,000 people; for those 18 to 44 years old, hospitalization is 0.1 percent per 100,000. Even for people ages 65 to 74, only 1.7 percent were hospitalized.

Fact 3: We do not currently have herd immunity to the coronavirus? So...idgi what you're saying? 

Fact 5: The numbers show older people are at risk...? How is that not a fact

Fact 2 ignores that, unchecked, a rapid number of infections could result in hospital overcrowding anyway. I'm not disputing the fact that older people have higher rates of hospitalization, rather that they are being presented in a very sketchy way. The article reads "0.1 percent per 100,000". What does this even mean? A percent is always per one hundred (hello? per cent, from the Latin centum meaning one hundred), so per cent per 100,000 is already a red flag. In fact, following the link to the data this is supposed to be based off, which is on a nyc.gov page (so I'm assuming it is reliable), you find that the rate of hospitalizations of people under 65 per 100,000 people is 784, which is not 0.1 but 0.784 percent. Furthermore, presenting it as a percent is already not a good metric, because it lacks information. 0.78 percent of how much? Surely if 100,000 people get infected, only 784 will be hospitalized and this is manageable. What if 10 million get infected over a relatively short period of time, say, two or three weeks? Then the number of hospitalizations would be around 78,000, and this is just the people under 65. Suddenly, this looks much harder to handle. Also missing is the amount of time patients generally spend hospitalized, but that's a different point.

Fact 3 is just appallingly poor-sourced. It starts by making a very general statement that "we know from decades of medical science that infection itself allows people to generate an immune response – antibodies – so that the infection is controlled throughout the population by herd immunity." Guess what? This isn't totally true. Immunity is not usually an on-off switch, in fact, for most infectious diseases it never is. This is why a lot of vaccines require boosters every couple of years, you have to continuously remind your immune system keep up defenses. About COVID-19, though, we know nothing. This is a totally new virus so we don't know if we can even develop long-term immunity to it. Most coronaviruses we know, and many of them cause a common cold, only result in a short-term immunity that goes away in a couple of months--much too short for herd immunity to exist. In addition, there is evidence that aymptomatic and mildly symptomatic infections of COVID-19 result in weaker immune response, and likely shorter-lived, than moderate and severe cases. 

Fact 5, like the ones before, doesn't give you the full information. Yes, there is a clearly defined population at risk who could be protected with targeted measures, and unfortunately some of those measures aren't easy to implement at the moment, particularly widespread testing. To suggest that locking older people up would solve the problem easily overlooks the many factors needed to make that strategy work.

[Maleficent 6]

8 minutes ago, Franz Ferdinand said:

0.1 percent per 100,000

in a population sample of 100,000, 0.1% of them required hospitalization (i.e. 100 people out of 100,000). 

9 minutes ago, Franz Ferdinand said:

In addition, there is evidence that aymptomatic and mildly symptomatic infections of COVID-19 result in weaker immune response, and likely shorter-lived, than moderate and severe cases.

there are 2 strains. one that causes a weaker infection, one that results in a stronger one. the weaker strain is more common, and weak enough that infection is not a serious risk. the stronger one can give us herd immunity, but yes, for perhaps a limited time. 

12 minutes ago, Franz Ferdinand said:

To suggest that locking older people up would solve the problem easily overlooks the many factors needed to make that strategy work

so does the strategy of locking everyone up, in my opinion. 

[Diamond Heart 4,400]

Why are Americans so angry and against isolation? The WHOLE WORLD is doing it ffs. This isnt a scare tactic, its a tactic to protect and save lives. Do these people think the WHOLE WORLD is doing this for fun hm? ridiculous.  Honestly it just makes me think that business and certain people are more worried about losing money/stock than actually trying to stop this pandemic. So selfish and irresponsible. 

[Maleficent 6]

6 minutes ago, Diamond Heart said:

Honestly it just makes me think that business and certain people are more worried about losing money/stock than actually trying to stop this pandemic. So selfish and irresponsible. 

The economy and proper healthcare, mortality rate, birth rates, and life-threatening poverty are directly linked. 

Shutting down and staying home will also kill millions of lives around the world, and push developing countries into deep poverty which will take decades to recover from. 

The argument isn’t as simple as “stay home and lives will be saved”.