Color me stupid.... please explain
Covid .04% death rate. That mainly kills people with other mitigating factors.
Flu. 1% death rate. Kills all ages. Affects healthy as well as immune depressed.
Both mutate. (Different strains)
Neither has an effective vaccine.
One we shut down USA, one we don’t. Why?
i will do this line by line (ignoring the obvious first line):
"Covid .04% death rate. That mainly kills people with other mitigating factors."
so far the death rate estimates have varied because of the different ways different countries have been reporting and testing. there's not much we can do about that other than continuing the studies of infection rate and death rates. this is helped by more testing that is scientifically valid (random tests or full population studies).
the "mainly kills" part is true, i give you that, so far. the bigger issues are:
the cost to society of the ICU stays
the ability of the health care system to cope
the putting of health care people at risk,
the long term damage
the many complications of this virus (liver, brain, kidneys, etc...)
"Flu. 1% death rate. Kills all ages. Affects healthy as well as immune depressed."
not as easily compared as you keep trying to do. the Covid virus also affects healthy and immune depressed and also kills all ages and does damage to all ages.
"Both mutate. (Different strains)"
both mutate, different viruses entirely (not different strains). not comparable. the meanings of mutations are quite different because they are different viruses.
"Neither has an effective vaccine."
different viruses, different reasons for lack of effective vaccine. also i'm sure that sometimes the flu vaccine is more effective than other times. the mutation issues will make it more likely that if they come up with effective vaccine for Covid it will be more likley to remain effective while the flu has a much different structure (it is a different virus and not only a different strain of the flu virus)
"One we shut down USA, one we don’t. Why?"
we did not shut down the USA, if we actually had shut down the USA we'd not be in the mess we're in right now.
the difference between an endemic disease (one that is already established and circulating in the whole population) and an emerging disease is that if you stop the emerging disease then you can eradicate it before it becomes endemic.
go back in recent history and look at the previous SARS and MERS outbreaks and what was done when those started out. those two were prevented from becoming endemic. look at the death rates of those. tell me if you want those to have become endemic. recently Ebola has had a few outbreaks in Africa too, they've managed to keep those mostly under control by using vaccines, contact tracing and getting people the care they need.
the failure in this time was not shutting down air travel quickly, not putting the whole nation on hold for a few weeks while the situation was evaluated. yes, this would have caused damage to the economy, but as you can see the lack of doing it right to begin with has kept this going a lot longer than it needs to be - i think the damage has been much worse than it had to be.
New Zealand has managed to keep this from becoming an endemic pandemic there in that country - it can be done. the lack of will and leadership has certainly made it harder here in comparison. yes, there are other factors too, but the claims that the USoA can't do something complicated isn't true. we've done a lot of good things that were complicated. we need effective leadership and we certainly don't have that.
Well said, thank You Zeedman.
