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Comment by mrits | Hacker News Reader

To get worse than COVID you'd need a virus that takes a long time to develop symptoms and then has a high death rate. In that scenario there would be a lot more public fear and we'd have an easier time keeping people at home. So I'm still of the opinion it's harder to have a worse situation than COVID.

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Yeah this pandemic has been described as the perfect middle ground for politicization, denialism, and just laissez-faire attitudes.

Any more deadly (like Ebola) it becomes incredibly scary and people likely do whatever it takes when they see people around them dropping like flies (especially in horrific ways).

Any less deadly (basically the yearly flu) and it becomes easy to ignore and just becomes part of the background process.

COVID is somewhere in between. Deadly enough that hundreds of thousands of people are dying unnecessarily. But can still feel a million miles away for so many people.

This was not a good "training pandemic".

> This was not a good "training pandemic".

Was it not though? I assume you'd want a pandemic deadly enough for that convinces a majority of the populace that it's a serious event (to encourage downstream change to better prepare for a worse pandemic), while at the same time not causing people to drop like flies. As you stated, anything less severe would be taken less seriously. To have something to be taken more serious, it has to be more deadly.

Despite the denialism we currently have, it seems to have made the world recognize the importance of preparation.

MERS (which didn't reach the US) was probably a better "training pandemic" because of the high rate of symptoms early on in the infection. One could take drastic measures to isolate the infected and prevent many deaths.

It didn't cause billions of people to gain experience in stocking up on supplies, learning how to live while locked down and the problems it entails, and wearing masks and taking other precautions. Therefore, it didn't serve as a training pandemic, except maybe for a small group. (It seems it did serve as training for vaccine developers, at least.)

I would say that it was not, at least not for US because it did not reach it.

"more deadly" does not necessarily mean more deaths in this case. If it kills like ebola more folks could take it seriously ultimately resulting in lower transmission and death rates.

In particular, when COVID19 was first spreading but we knew about it back in February countries could've easily contact traced to flush it out and then quarantined all incoming travelers to keep it out.

But most countries deemed those actions too extreme and economically damaging so instead let it come spread and do way more damage.

What you're proposing is highly experimental and probably wouldn't work. There's no single country in the world that has been able to restrain the sars2 virus despite spending millions trying to do so.

Other than Australia, China, New Zealand, and Vietnam, you mean? And China managed that after it had already spread widely domestically; the others were quick on their feet.

Cambodia too. We had our first known case of community transmission three weeks ago. It topped at 41 cases and we’ve had no new ones for three days.

We have mandatory two week quarantine for all arivals, stores lose their business licenses if they let anyone in without a mask. Schools, cinemas, gyms, clubs are all closed.

We’re hoping things will open up again in two weeks.

Australia- It's summer there. Duh. China- I'd prefer to die than live on my knees New Zealand- Summer. and Vietnam- SARS1 cross immunity, remember?

It's just not realistic for the US to be able to match the performance of countries with advanced healthcare capabilities and resources like Vietnam.

Seriously, we can't expect to match the performance of a low income country we bombed back to the stone age just a few decades ago?

Vietnam isn't a paragon of wealth and competent administration today, there is no good reason our public health departments should not have been able to perform equally or better than their equivalents in Vietnam.

It’s a shame we’ve forgotten about the incompetence and idiocy that got us to where we are today.

So many failures got us to this point.

Also taking into account that often the balance between spreading the disease and letting people work to feed themselves and loved ones is a massive challenge.

In my country we have destroyed economiy due to 10 years of incompetent greedy politics which had killed it already. People are out of work because of that.

Now the pandemic has made sure no one will recover at an acceptable rate, because new politicians also struggle to find the balance.

At this side of the planet we are screwed at such a hard rate, its amazing I can still feed myself, pay utilities and internet and be medically insured

It was a good "training pandemic". Some countries did quite well (Taiwan, Japan, Vietnam, New Zealand, etc.) and some countries did poorly (the US, Brazil, parts of Europe). Overall, being able to develop and deploy a vaccine within a calendar year seems like a success. Though a lack of inexpensive, quick, home administered tests seems like kind of a failure - they exist, but they haven't been backed by governments to the point where they can be manufactured in large numbers.

Totally disagree about the last part. The more pain we suffer now, the longer the lesson will last.

> The more pain we suffer now, the longer the lesson will last.

More evidence of the pervasive political attitude that’s “science-based” but more like modern day fundamentalist fire-and-brimstone “anyone smiling wrought all the suffering in the world” Christianity.

That's not how psychology of pain works.

I don't need to hold my hand in a fire to know not to touch fire again.

Giving someone pain/suffering to teach them a lesson is just abuse.

You personally don’t... but look around... A lot of people are playing with fire

> Any more deadly (like Ebola) .....

Ebola requires direct contact with bodily fluids, it's not nearly as easily transmittable as Covid. Note that seasonal flu levels are at historic lows [1, 2], despite Covid raging to the point where many US states' ICUs are filled to capacity.

[1]: https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/flu-season-never-... [2]: https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-020-03519-3

The more deadly a virus is the less likely you will have super spreaders. If the virus was 5x deadly you would probably also see 5x worse symptoms in most people. So instead of taking a bunch of DayQuil and going to the business meeting that person would be home feeling and looking like shit.

If the death rates in children vs. elderly were reversed with COVID, all hell would have broken loose. There is nothing people are more protective over than their kids. Behavior would have been completely different.

Agreed. Nothing is more important to most than the future (kids). The past seems to be a whatever. We don't learn from the past at all. Sadly.

> We don't learn from the past at all. Sadly.

History rhymes and we are doing our best. Please don't blame others ala "Those who ignore the past are doomed to repeat the mistakes"... We will have much more possibilities and views in the future though and are currently blind(er) compared to that.

Yes, indeed.

I believe there's been a misunderstanding where people think COVID is more dangerous to elderly people because they just tend to be generically vulnerable to a lot of disease.

That's not the case, however. If you compare death rates within different age groups, the risk for elderly is dramatically higher, even in comparison to other diseases that tend to be worse in old age (yes, exactly, such as the flu).

Even though it's less dangerous for young people, there's still reports that it was the top cause of death for people in their 20s or 30s this summer. The absolute numbers aren't that high, but it turns out people in their 20s and 30s don't die randomly that often either.

It also depends on how one defines danger. Would you rather die a few years earlier in your old age? Or live with reduced lung capacity for many years? And how common is that with COVID19?

We're still waiting to see the fall-out of long COVID.

Vote / Reply I'll take two fewer years of lifespan, for 200, Alex.

I'm an athlete, and my cardiopulmonary bits are essential to my sense of well-being.

/Acey

You say this now but if we ask you then, the day of your death, would you rather die now or live a few more years in a diminished capacity, you might have a very different answer.

But that’s not the trade off. Rather it’s “would you rather die now, or have lived in a diminished capacity for the last few decades?”

Don't outsmart yourself.

If you told anyone, on their death bed, "if you had run 25 km a week since [n-15 years] you would have been able to move better / dance with pretty girls / play [tennis | golf | etc] until two years ago," I think most people would say WHY DIDN'T YOU TELL ME.

/Acey

I was in SE Asia when H1N1pdm9 hit. There were 60m cases in the US that year, and 14,000 deaths that year in the US, and 75,000 deaths since 2009. It predominantly affected younger people[1], and barely hit elderly people. The CDC estimates it killed 150k to 500k people the first year it circulated across the world. I was wearing a mask in Macau, and my kids aged 12 and 9 years-old in the US at the time were not as almost all Americans were not wearing masks. The WHO declared an end to the pandemic in August 2010, but it causes illness, hospitalizations, and deaths each year as a seasonal flu the same way COVID-19 probably will in the coming years.

[1] https://www.cdc.gov/flu/pandemic-resources/2009-h1n1-pandemi...

True. But the data to date indicates that it boils down to marginalized vs not. Covid has done well with nursing homes and lower socioeconomic minority communities. People absolutely care about the children. But they care about what threatens them directly as well.

The profile to date is not close enough to home for most (white) middle class Americans. But that lack of fear to some extent, at this point, is statistically justified. That is, once you get outside the sweet spot the chance of death declines.

The virus is real. The deaths are real. However, despite the media hyperbol (and complete lack of basic lack of understanding of data and data analysis) how those deaths are distributed is uneven. Very much so.

On the other hand the lockdowns were extremely destructive on children. Loss of schools, education, parents losing jobs, domestic violence, suicides.

Honestly, kids are just fine with it. Anecdotally, they are managing far better than adults. Not oblivious to the situation, but far more adaptable to just staying at home.

Depends where and who we live with.

Another possibility: something that generates mild cold/flu symptoms but does long term damage that you won't notice right away.

This would cause the "Bob had it and he's fine!" mentality to spread as it currently is.

An example of this may be HIV.

Or COVID! There's been some reports about long term damage to people's lungs and such. To be frank, that's what scares me a lot more than the acute disease as someone who's still relatively young.

Have you actually researched that though? I have yet to see a study that examined people’s lungs before they got COVID as a comparison.

And it would be worth knowing the numbers before jumping on the fear wagon. Is it 1 in 10 young people or 1 in 10,000?

It seems to be at least a few percent of all cases. A majority of cases which are hospitalized have long-term effects too. It's also common enough that anecdotally -- I'm in a city hit hard and early by COVID. I can't tell you if it's 30% or 2%, but it's definitely not 1:10,000.

There’s no evidence to suggest COVID causes serious damage to those with minor to medium level symptoms. When the media talks about lung damage they seem to be talking about those who nearly died from the disease.

Not trying to minimise the seriousness of COVID, but simply suggesting there is no evidence of serious long term impact to the majority of cases.

I know of three colleagues who had minor cold like symptoms, 2/3 still talk about being winded climbing stairs, and both are physically fit 30 somethings.

I think lack of evidence is more a symptom of limited information.

Not lost on me that despite being a rare disease I know five people that have had guillain barre syndrome[1]. And I know about ten people who appear to have some sort of chronic malaise. I suspicious those are the result of viral infections.

There is also the minority opinion that some forms of dementia are due latent viral infections.

[1] You don't guillain barre syndrome takes years to recover and is absolutely traumatic.

Or we would have mounted a testing and tracing program, and not gotten into a situation where we need people to stay home for 2-3 years.

Like HIV/AIDS. We were lucky that doesn’t spread as easily.

You just need something that is truely airborne, not just able to fly with sneezes and exhalations.

Something that spreads like measles and kills 5%, maims some, etc.

Kind of related - most people probably don’t know, but the first studies around “zombie apocalypse” were just that, simulations of a bad virus outbreak.

options:

1) massive mutation rate, altering exterior structure making a single vaccine impossible (e.g. influenza)

2) touch-based transmission, with 72 hour surface viability

3) incredibly "ugly" death process (e.g. ebola) with huge risks for health care providers

4) high death rate but very slow deaths

HIV fits that list ?

Something like smallpox, then?

"we'd have an easier time keeping people at home" [citation needed]

Opinions don't require citations.

Better yet, a virus (or some other kind of infectious agent, how about a fungus next?) that spreads rapidly but has no symptoms, and may lay dormant for over a year until it receives certain infrequent but not rare triggers, upon which it kills the host quickly.

Let's say pregnancy, a new Star Wars movie, or birth; transferred from parent to child, "activates" inside the newborn and then kills the parents too.

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