There seems to be a significant portion of otherwise young and healthy people that have an unreasonable fear of this disease. I'm not talking about people taking some extra precautions or social distancing. I'm talking about the people that are legitimately scared of going to the grocery store, or the people freaking out because kids are playing outside. I could understand some of this behavior if the person was in the at risk category, or had a family member living with them that was at risk, but it seems like a lot of it isn't coming from those people.
I think we need a little prospective. Even in Italy where Some of the hospitals have been over run the fatality rate for people under 40 is around .5%. People under 50 is slightly higher but still low. That includes people with pre-existing conditions, but doesn't include people who had such a mild case that they were never tested. The real fatality rate or even hospitalization rate for the young and healthy is likely even lower than the numbers we have now indicate. We can't pay attention to just the anecdotal cases of bad outcomes. Sometimes bad things happen in life. Kids get cancer, young and healthy people sometimes die of the flu. This isn't much different than that. We can't focus on the worst cases, just like we don't focus on all the fatal car accidents we see on the nightly news every time we get in a car.
Now let's talk about total fatalities. The estimated number seems to be around 100,000 to 240,000. That is no doubt a tragic amount. However, how many of those people were likely to die this year even if this pandemic never happened? I haven't seen any stats on this, but I'd bet that it is a significant percentage and probably even a majority. The majority of the people dying from this seem to be people that likely only had at most few years left to live anyways. That doesn't make their death less tragic, but I don't understand why we need to be afraid because they died of Coronavirus instead of some other well known disease.
For those of us that are not in the at risk category, we need to take a deep breath, and realize that it's going to be ok. The sun will come up tomorrow. Take some extra precautions, do social distancing, wear a mask if you want to, but don't freak out and don't worry about stuff we can't control.
I think we need a little prospective. Even in Italy where Some of the hospitals have been over run the fatality rate for people under 40 is around .5%. People under 50 is slightly higher but still low. That includes people with pre-existing conditions, but doesn't include people who had such a mild case that they were never tested. The real fatality rate or even hospitalization rate for the young and healthy is likely even lower than the numbers we have now indicate. We can't pay attention to just the anecdotal cases of bad outcomes. Sometimes bad things happen in life. Kids get cancer, young and healthy people sometimes die of the flu. This isn't much different than that. We can't focus on the worst cases, just like we don't focus on all the fatal car accidents we see on the nightly news every time we get in a car.
Now let's talk about total fatalities. The estimated number seems to be around 100,000 to 240,000. That is no doubt a tragic amount. However, how many of those people were likely to die this year even if this pandemic never happened? I haven't seen any stats on this, but I'd bet that it is a significant percentage and probably even a majority. The majority of the people dying from this seem to be people that likely only had at most few years left to live anyways. That doesn't make their death less tragic, but I don't understand why we need to be afraid because they died of Coronavirus instead of some other well known disease.
For those of us that are not in the at risk category, we need to take a deep breath, and realize that it's going to be ok. The sun will come up tomorrow. Take some extra precautions, do social distancing, wear a mask if you want to, but don't freak out and don't worry about stuff we can't control.
