Posts: 1366 from 2003/2/15
From: Central Europe
@Amifrog
Quote:
I believe the targeted delay is the real danger, as it will not reduce the number of infected people: we almost all need to get infected to gain immunity. But delaying this spread will cause damage; there is no way we can get out of this without most of the people catching this flu.
Despite the relatively low number of infections we have right now, the wealthiest nations in the world are struggling hard to keep up and many medical facilities lack even the most basic necessities such as adequate supplies of hand gloves in order to properly follow recommended safety procedures.
There is no viable alternative to delaying the rate of infections until we are better prepared to deal with the inevitable.
Quote:
Don't you agree that controlling safe access and nursery of a minority takes less effort than controlling the outbreak of a mere inconvenience to the majority of people including shutting down all systems that could help those in real danger?
Zylesea has already commented on how effective this would be.
It also seems worth pointing out that the death rate statistics vary greatly between countries. Based on a new study from China, younger people are not quite as immune as initially thought. Also, countries such as France have a substantially higher percentage of deaths for people under the age of 65.
Here are two possible explanations: The first is that we still lack sufficiently reliable data to be able to accurately assess risks in terms of national or even global mortality rates.
The second one is that the virus is mutating so it changes its risk profile.
The first explanation seems more likely at this stage but who would be willing to bet that the death rates stay the same for all age groups as the number of infections moves from tens of thousands of people up to the billions while the virus continues to shift and drift?
Based on numbers from the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention, the death rate for children between the ages of 10 and 19 is 0.2 percent. How many parents are going to send their teenage children to school if they are aware there is a 1 in 500 chance of them dying after an infection? I would not. Would you?
