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Comment by brenden2 | Hacker News Reader

I just opened the NYTimes front page and counted the number of occurrences of "coronavirus". I counted 15 total.

The biggest winners from coronavirus are going to be those who sell fear (i.e., mainstream media). I also suppose anyone who was astute enough to open a large short position against the market in the past week or two will profit. I think we're only going to see an increase in panic and fear before things settle down. What real impact there will be on the world remains to be seen, I think it's too early to tell.

Worst case, it seems like the virus will mostly harm those who are at risk of death, but healthy people will probably be okay.

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> Worst case, it seems like the virus will mostly harm those who are at risk of death, but healthy people will probably be okay.

Plenty of healthy people have died, and it seems the disease is so aggressive that it can cause significant organ damage in survivors. Most healthy people are likely to be ok, but not all.

There has been no credible evidence of “organ damage” in survivors.

These are unsubstantiated rumors. Stop repeating them.

I’m glad you asked, skepticism can be a healthy attitude in moderations and there is a lot of FUD around, but here’s an article from the Lancet. These were 99 patients, 11 of whom ultimately died. That means from the stats below a significant number of the patients with organ damage, possibly most of them, must have survived. Also the stats below were on admission, it’s likely even more of the patients may have suffered organ damage by the time they were discharged.

https://www.thelancet.com/pdfs/journals/lancet/PIIS0140-6736...

>Many patients presented with organ function damage, including 17 (17%) with ARDS, eight (8%) with acute respiratory injury, three (3%) with acute renal injury, four (4%) with septic shock, and one (1%) with venti latorassociatedpneumonia(table2).

These conditions are listed as “comorbidities”, which means that they’re illnesses they already had, in addition to the virus.

In no way is this paper saying that the virus caused the listed conditions.

If you know what comorbidity means, you must know perfectly well that it includes secondary conditions, such as organ function damage, caused by the primary condition.

At these levels of prevalence, I think that comfortably clears the bar for having some pretty credible evidence.

??????? This is way too critical of an approach to this issue. Coronavirus affects supply chains, schools and many other facets of our lives. If mainstream media didn’t report heavily on the risks that would be negligent.

There have been many people who were healthy and have been infected, and also just because some people are at the risk of death; doesn’t means we should just cast off Coronavirus as a minor concern.

A lot of people die every year for a lot of reasons. Have a look at the CDC's death statistics[1]. One interesting thing to note is that flu vaccines are widely available and quite affordable, and yet many people die every year from the flu.

Yes, the virus may increase the total number of deaths overall, but my armchair hypothesis is that fear and panic will do more long term damage than the virus itself.

[1]: https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/deaths.htm

China has a flu every year, their reaction to the current outbreak is vastly different from a flu. That suggests that they consider it a bigger threat than the flu.

The US death rate is about 0.83%. The current raw death rate of COVID-19 is 2.6%. A quadrupling of the US death rate in a year is likely to cause concern. Consider all the concern over the far smaller number of firearm deaths.

we can't yet conclusively determine overall death rate, let alone for the US, of covid-19 (or alternatively speaking, the error bars of our current estmates are very large), so throwing out numbers with decimals insinuates a level of knowledge we don't yet have.

note that we've had single-digit number of deaths (one?) in the US so far.

34K people die of gun violence per year in the US, not a small number. what's insignificant is the number (tens to low hundreds per year) who die in mass shootings or from terrorism in the US.

Aren’t these comparisons a bit like saying that the pipes in Flynt Michigan are already toxic, so what’s another toxin added in to the mix?

Yes, we have zero deaths in America today. But like the grains of rice on the chessboard in the old fable, exponential growth can take people by surprise.

not at all. the point is that we really don't know enough yet to draw definitive conclusions either way, and it's erroneous to make (strong) assertions otherwise.

a reasonable response for individuals is to keep monitoring the situation and taking basic precautions (e.g., washing hands) but not becoming paranoid/spreading paranoia.

if you live with elderly or immune-compromised people, you might be a little more cautious, but there's no need to barricade yourself in your house with a stockpile of n95 masks at this point.

(btw, 1 american death was reported this morning)

If this was a new strand of the flu then I could understand what you are saying, but now we will have the flu which as you said many people die from, and we will have a new virus (nobody has immunity to) which many people will die as well, especially once this virus fully spreads across the globe.

Now I don't think extreme panic is a good, but fear on a certain level could help. I am in a major city and I have seen a lot better hygiene practices from civilians and businesses in the last couple of weeks.

You sound just like this super spreader missionary who shouted "It's not a big deal, we are all going to heaven."

I’m a bit bored of these ‘it’s just flu’ arguments.

Even though not everyone is vaccinated, flu vaccine does a good job of preventing flu going too far through the population. People are immunised against it and that helps stop it spread.

Also, even at the bottom end of fatality rate it’s 10X deadlier then flu.

I’m also bored of people saying it is OK because it only effects old people - so you don’t have any old people you care about?

My dad is 60 years old and just barely survived a bought of pancreatitis a few years ago. He’s got every single complicating health issue. According to the statistics that means he has like a 1 in 4 or 1 in 3 chance of dying if he catches this. That’s way worse than his odds with the flu or a cold. Maybe my dad doesn’t matter to you, but he’s kind of important to me.

That sucks. Both my parents have cancer (breast & prostate). I hope your dad lives many more good years.

I guess you just don’t know or care about anyone old or with a health condition, or who’s young and a bit unlucky. Or about potential panic buying, shortages of things made in China, and economic depression.

In this case, sure everything will be fine.

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