Is he saying the current vaccines are not efficient?
I still don't get what makes covid different from the flu. Yes, covid is a little bit more deadly, but other than, why don't we just accept it as part of our lives like we did with the flu?
I still don't get what makes covid different from the flu. Yes, covid is a little bit more deadly, but other than, why don't we just accept it as part of our lives like we did with the flu?
What's more, regular care and non-urgent surgeries are put on hold, increasing the risk that patients experience more severe symptoms. Nurses and doctors are burned out and consider leaving their jobs.
That's why we can't "just accept it".
The flu typically kills the extreme elderly or people with extremely compromised immune systems. Aka they might die at 94 vs 95. COVID on the other kills people who are relatively much healthier, someone that dies at 75 vs 95 lost 20 years not 1.
This is also why people 70+ are almost fully vaccinated in the US. For that age range it’s an extremely serious disease with a high chance of killing them after infection.
Older people certainly dominate the vulnerable groups, but there are many other people living with various forms of immune system dysfunction. This is why the rest of us need to mask, vaccinate, and get boosters to minimize our chance of propagating the disease to the more vulnerable parts of our population. Not doing so is basically saying you don't care about other people.
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-021-83040-3
The average age of COVID-19 deaths in developed countries is about 80. Fortunately the vaccines and other treatments have greatly reduced the risk of death.
https://www.ons.gov.uk/aboutus/transparencyandgovernance/fre...
https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-covid-age-penalty-115920032...
Edit COVID has actually killed 800,000 Americans.
20x of 30k < 800k. You can cut argue it should cover multiple years of flu, except the first US COVID case was less than 2 years ago and it really only got started in March 2020. Per month COVID has killed more people than the flu does per year on average and it’s not exactly stopping this winter.
Years lost are then on top of that deaths multiplier.
That said coronavirus have long been one of the causes of the common cold and occasionally cause diseases of significant concern like SARS, COVID, etc. That’s likely around for the long haul unless some massive medical breakthroughs show up.
Because several areas are very near 100% hospital capacity with COVID patients still, and a COVID ICU visit is much more demanding from a timespan and resource perspective in terms of staff and equipment. We can't risk relaxing restrictions when hospitals are unable to bear an increase in patients.
From a cynical point of view, COVID policy is about protecting infrastructure - and only save lives as a side effect.
This is why many places had specific policy for essential services and essential workers, daycare and schooling, transportation, - as well as putting restrictions on private industry which in some countries has become significantly more centralized like meat processing.
Primarily because our health infrastructure has no capacity as is. Most places are really struggling, both with space and staff. Add to that the PTSD a lot of healthcare workers will be dealing with for decades to come.
And losing 1-3% of our total population isn't great.
But to your point: we will end up living with COVID as an endemic, so long as more people get vaccinated. We need to look at global vaccination rates beyond just local ones, too, as variants will continue to mutate throughout the world. With the vast, vast majority of folks winding up in the hospital being unvaccinated--taking up space, time and money--we're going to be struggling for a while.
And COVID patients are impacting the capacity for people to get routine check ups, and in some locations emergency work, done. It's bad for everyone. Until the numbers are low enough that our doctors and nurses aren't being pushed beyond their limit, we can't consider it sustainable.
https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/cases-updates/burd...
> Globally, about 3.4% of reported COVID-19 cases have died. By comparison, seasonal flu generally kills far fewer than 1% of those infected.
https://www.who.int/director-general/speeches/detail/who-dir...
We know this number was likely under-reporting the total cases, due to asymptomatic cases we didn't test for, but I think a range of 1-3% mortality for COVID, letting it go unchecked, is reasonable. This isn't even accounting for variants, as Delta evidenced.
Deaths will climb as our hospitals become encumbered, so we can't rely on the low-range estimates if fewer people are able to receive treatment. This is why we can't just accept COVID as something we live with and do nothing about quite yet.
The additional amount of hospitalizations from COVID19 is crushing our hospitals, even with some vaccine support. A number of states have run out of hospital beds in the August 2021 COVID19 Delta-variant surge.
Fortunately, we've got vaccines, monoclonal antibodies, and dexamethasone today compared to March 2020. With all of these new techniques, the death rate has dropped, and treatment of COVID19 has gotten easier.
Still, we're stressing our hospitals to severe limits in parts of the country. We'd ideally want more slack, so that our nurses / doctors can get a well deserved break from this pandemic.