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Comment by DiabloD3 | Hacker News Reader

I read scientific papers that are published in journals as a hobby. If you think my assessment is wildly overblown, then you might not actually be listening to the CDC, the thousands of researchers out there across hundreds of labs and universities, and everyone else trying to keep everyone safe.

If you think I'm wrong, you should be able to quote legitimate sources on why COVID is not incredibly dangerous and should not be taken as a serious threat to life and liberty.

I know you didn't intend on sounding like this, but you're veering into COVID denier territory, the kind of nay-saying that Trump et al are fueling on Twitter and Facebook. COVID is an extreme threat, according to the science, short, medium, and long term.

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As you're reading those papers, take into account the probabilities of different outcomes instead of assuming that the worst case applies across the board.

Then feel free to actually bring proper argumentation instead of throwing some weird sentences out into the outernet...

There is a difference between "reading" and "unserstanding".

This made my morning.

> I know you didn't intend on sounding like this, but you're veering into COVID denier territory, the kind of nay-saying that Trump et al are fueling on Twitter and Facebook

You're trying to sound like you're being reasonable, but you're trying to discredit someone as being a "COVID denier" and Donald Trump, neither of which are necessarily true, and certainly don't seem true about the OP. The use of "veering" is simply guilt by association. Your thinking that you're more intelligent than other because you've read papers just comes off as you being full of yourself.

I'd rather be unreasonable and "wrong" but alive than reasonable and "right" but permanently scarred and/or dead.

COVID is a serious threat, and people need to stop taking it lightly. I do not believe devin is a COVID denier, but he is using language that is dangerously close to being misinterpreted as being one, at least, in my opinion.

It isn't a question of who is more intelligent, it is a question of what does the science say, and what is the most accurate interpretation of it. I stick with what I said originally: we're fucked.

Arguably, it is now worse than the Spanish Flu. The 1918 pandemic killed about 3% of the world population, which COVID is unlikely to reach; however, some projections (on the outside) give about that many people that could be infected before this is over. Some people may never show any long term damage from being infected, but it seems that most people infected eventually will.

Why is that important? Because those people will be a strain on an already screwed up healthcare system, potentially, for the rest of their lives. So either healthcare internationally is revolutionized to such an extent that this isn't an issue, or it is going to cause extreme pressure on the world economy, especially in countries like the US.

We currently do not know how many people will make it out with no scars, we may not know the full extent of the damage for another 10-20 years. The more we understand of SARS-CoV-2, the worse it looks.

COVID doesn't care what your race is, your gender, your political affiliation. Please, all of you, keep yourselves safe.

> COVID is a serious threat, and people need to stop taking it lightly. I do not believe devin is a COVID denier, but he is using language that is dangerously close to being misinterpreted as being one, at least, in my opinion.

So what's your point? That's a totally useless argument. If he's not a COVID denier, as you put it, what purpose does it serve to suggest that he's adjacent to COVID denial besides to discredit him based on your sensibilities?

> It isn't a question of who is more intelligent, it is a question of what does the science say, and what is the most accurate interpretation of it. I stick with what I said originally: we're fucked.

Science, by definition, isn't correct. This is why, contrary to what most people think, including those who wear suits and ties, scientists don't just all come to the same conclusions. I think you can agree with that because you use the phrase "accurate interpretation". The reason I'm saying your rationale here is utterly useless is that it's ignoring the epistemology of what it is to have an accurate interpretation of scientific data. How exactly do you know that your interpretation is more accurate than someone elses? That's the real question. Pointing to science and stating that you are correct really doesn't demonstrate anything other than that perhaps your understanding of science is misguided.

> Arguably, it is now worse than the Spanish Flu.

You're right, it is arguable.

> The 1918 pandemic killed about 3% of the world population, which COVID is unlikely to reach; however, some projections (on the outside) give about that many people that could be infected before this is over.

How does "worse than the Spanish Flu" precede this? What you just said here seems to totally contradict what you said prior.

SARS-Cov-2 doesn't kill everyone that it infects. Not even close. Given its mortality rate, the only way it could approach killing 3% of the global population is if 100% of people were infected, which never happens. Even if we saw a 3% global die-off, which won't happen in part because we seem to be keeping overall deaths down despite having sharp increases in confirmed cases, it disproportionately affects the elderly and those with preexisting conditions. The Spanish Flu, which is believed to have been a form of H1N1, disproportionately killed young people. I know this sounds callous, but a virus that spares the lives of people with more years ahead of them seems preferable over one that kills people in their prime.

I really would like to understand what your measure is that brought you to your conclusion that COVID-19 is "worse than the Spanish Flu" because, from most measures I can tell, it's not as bad. Are you judging this by the fact that the virus seems to be causing organ damage? I can kind of see that but my last point still stands IMO since those whom are getting organ damage are a percentage of ICU patients, something between 20 and 30 percent, which is large but that doesn't represent even close to a majority of people who are contracting the virus.

Don't get me wrong, it's bad, but somehow that doesn't sound worse to me than 3% of the global population getting wiped out. It remains to be seen if we will ever approach that with COVID-19.

> We currently do not know how many people will make it out with no scars, we may not know the full extent of the damage for another 10-20 years. The more we understand of SARS-CoV-2, the worse it looks.

That's totally valid.

> How exactly do you know that your interpretation is more accurate than someone elses?

I don't. However, given the severity of the outcome of contracting COVID, would you rather play it safe, or be secure in your interpretation (which is less severe than mine)?

> ... disproportionately killed young people. I know this sounds callous, but a virus that spares the lives of people with more years ahead of them seems preferable over one that kills people in their prime.

Younger people are also dropping dead from COVID, and being scarred for life by it, far more than the original numbers in March and April indicated. You don't need to just be worried about your grandparents, you need to be worried about yourself just as much.

Being elderly, and all the comorbidities that are associated with older people, just increase an already significant chance of unfavorable outcome.

> I really would like to understand what your measure is that brought you to your conclusion that COVID-19 is "worse than the Spanish Flu" because, from most measures I can tell, it's not as bad.

Lets try this another way. Do you know why the US military switched from 7.62 to 5.56? If you kill a soldier, hes dead, the body will be dealt with after the battle. If you wound a soldier, now another, healthy, soldier is trying to pull him out of the fray to save his life.

Spanish Flu is that 7.62, SARS is that 5.56. We are now going to have to spend significantly more resources than we would have otherwise to deal with the outcome of SARS, and it would be barbaric of us not to.

People will be suffering from heart, lung, even brain damage for the rest of their lives. This is happening during a time that, pre-COVID, the healthcare system in many countries, the US included, was coming off the rails.

SARS couldn't have come at a worse time. We don't have the medical system to deal with what we have now, how are we going to possibly deal with this new thing?

We couldn't even get proper insurance reform to go through with Obamacare without a full-scale partisan war happening in Congress. We're going to have to have something at least that big to tackle the eventual outcome of this.

If COVID would have killed people like the Spanish Flu did, then the worst we'd have to work with is the number of people missing from society, the brothers, sisters, mothers, fathers that aren't here anymore. But, this? We have to worry about something we don't understand and can't easily predict, something that could get much worse, and is getting worse.

We have to worry about something that may never go away. What if this becomes a SARS season, every year, like the Flu season? They are working on a vaccine, but it isn't here yet, and from the papers I have read, they have indicated that this may be very difficult given some people do not have useful immune responses, and we don't have an accurate idea of what percentage of the population has this issue; relying on herd immunity to save us doesn't seem to be working.

Any reasonable person should be absolutely terrified. However, what I see is a lot of unreasonable people that are not taking this as what may be the worst threat to society in our lifetimes, something that can only be compared to things we read about in history books.

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