A mask became a political issue the second the government mandated people to wear them.
It's true that medical professionals (and others) wear masks - in one aspect they are used to reduce the risk of bacterial/viral infections during surgeries (staph infections are a big problem in operating rooms)
But I don't recall my GP ever requiring to mask up for a physical assessment...even though he/she sees many sick people every day.
COVID has killed people, but I can say the same thing about every cold/flu virus that has ever existed. Please tell me, what makes this one so much more dangerous?
TL;DR : It's way deadlier than the flu and spreads exponentially faster.
Based on what I was able to find with a cursory search the death rate for COVID 19 is about 2.14% worldwide. That's taking all the deaths and dividing it by all the cases recorded.
Now, it's almost certainly much lower than that because people can get it and be asymptomatic, so they don't ever know they had it. But, we don't know how much lower.
The death rate for Influenza, even if you use the worst possible numbers (lowest case # = 340m cases per year, highest death number = 650k deaths) is 0.19%
So, that'd make COVID 19 eleven times more deadly than the flu. It's the difference between having a 1 in 50 chance of dying from it vs a 1 in 550 from the flu.
Also, the R number for COVID 19 is estimated to be about 2.87. The R, or reproduction number, is a measure of for every person who gets the virus how many people they'll infect on average. So for COVID 19 if you get it you're on average going to infect 2.87 others, then they'll each infect 2.87 others and so on.
For the typical seasonal influenza it's about 1.28. So COVID 19 is about 2.25 x more infectious, and keep in mind that makes it exponentially worse because each generation infects 2.25 x more.
So, after 10 infection cycles with the average seasonal flu a total of approximately 12 people would have been infected.
With COVID 19 that number would be 37,916.
As far as masks go I personally feel like if not wearing a mask only put the person who wasn't wearing the mask at risk, fine. It's your life and if you want to take the risk you should be allowed to. The problem is masks are much better at protecting others around you. Doctors don't wear masks for themselves most of the time, but to protect their vulnerable patients.
I am going to use US statistics, and I am going to assume that these numbers are correct and not manipulated for political reasons (which I am sure is a factor, it always is)
CDC statistics show for the last calendar year, COVID has about the same death rate as pneumonia in adult ranges and children are more likely to die of pneumonia than COVID, all of this despite many more people being infected with COVID than pneumonia.
Those that are vulnerable to COVID living in nursing homes/hospitals are just as much at risk of dying from pneumonia (which is rampant in those places, I can attest from having to bury a parent not too long ago) and roughly half of the reported 'COVID' deaths also had pneumonia listed as a complication.
Based on the raw numbers, I don't see how this disease (even if we are generous with statistics) is more dangerous than diseases that already exist and adversely affect the same vulnerable population in the same care facilities.
I was hospitalized with pneumonia in my twenties (I never smoked) and it was a very difficult experience. I could have died, it took me three weeks to recover enough to be discharged. I had breathing issues for a year afterward while my lungs healed.
I would rather take my chances with COVID than get pneumonia again.
I'm not seeing where the rate is, all I see if the total number of deaths which is similar, but without the number of infections it's an apples to oranges comparison. (Although I am tired so I might just not be seeing it)
But, COVID 19 is a risk factor for Pneumonia, so by taking your chances with COVID you're increasing your risk of getting Pneumonia again.
COVID is a risk factor for pneumonia...like all respiratory diseases are. Same goes for the common cold. There's nothing there that makes COVID unique.
There's no way there are anywhere near as many pneumonia infections as there are COVID cases. I can get stats, but I shouldn't have to.
The reality is that you cannot 'hide' the infection from the populace - we should be accepting that we will get it and scale up our medical services accordingly.
However, this is not the proposed solution. Instead, we are shuttering our economy and causing more deaths by destroying people financially.
We know the vast majority of people who catch this aren't going to die from it, so why would we take on the enormous financial burden of trying to self-contain the entire globe when it would be more effective to simply increase the options for treatment?
This solution isn't preventing deaths, it's adding to them. Domestic violence and suicides have increased significantly as a direct result of those policies, and yet we don't get 24/7 coverage of those deaths.
This is very similar to the climate change alarmism of two years ago - they say they want to reduce emissions, but the plan was actually to tax emissions and move production of those emissions from the West to China (where emissions increases were part of their plan, very strange) . Basically the goal was to transfer wealth from the West to authoritarian control.
Fun fact: The US achieved huge emissions reductions by switching to natural gas/shale. The environmental activists never like to talk about that.
The lockdowns achieved the same result. Goodbye small business. Hello Amazon and all of those cheapo goods from China. How convenient.
A mask became a political issue the second the government mandated people to wear them.
It's true that medical professionals (and others) wear masks - in one aspect they are used to reduce the risk of bacterial/viral infections during surgeries (staph infections are a big problem in operating rooms)
But I don't recall my GP ever requiring to mask up for a physical assessment...even though he/she sees many sick people every day.
COVID has killed people, but I can say the same thing about every cold/flu virus that has ever existed. Please tell me, what makes this one so much more dangerous?
TL;DR : It's way deadlier than the flu and spreads exponentially faster.
Based on what I was able to find with a cursory search the death rate for COVID 19 is about 2.14% worldwide. That's taking all the deaths and dividing it by all the cases recorded.
Now, it's almost certainly much lower than that because people can get it and be asymptomatic, so they don't ever know they had it. But, we don't know how much lower.
The death rate for Influenza, even if you use the worst possible numbers (lowest case # = 340m cases per year, highest death number = 650k deaths) is 0.19%
So, that'd make COVID 19 eleven times more deadly than the flu. It's the difference between having a 1 in 50 chance of dying from it vs a 1 in 550 from the flu.
Also, the R number for COVID 19 is estimated to be about 2.87. The R, or reproduction number, is a measure of for every person who gets the virus how many people they'll infect on average. So for COVID 19 if you get it you're on average going to infect 2.87 others, then they'll each infect 2.87 others and so on.
For the typical seasonal influenza it's about 1.28. So COVID 19 is about 2.25 x more infectious, and keep in mind that makes it exponentially worse because each generation infects 2.25 x more.
So, after 10 infection cycles with the average seasonal flu a total of approximately 12 people would have been infected.
With COVID 19 that number would be 37,916.
As far as masks go I personally feel like if not wearing a mask only put the person who wasn't wearing the mask at risk, fine. It's your life and if you want to take the risk you should be allowed to. The problem is masks are much better at protecting others around you. Doctors don't wear masks for themselves most of the time, but to protect their vulnerable patients.
Current COVID 19 infection/death #s - https://gisanddata.maps.arcgis.com/apps/opsdashboard/index.html?fbclid=IwAR0hpcbGbIn7ITyOOdeAQUlICV6nN31QocZL8V4z6xf--EQTvB0KOSHSmJI#/bda7594740fd40299423467b48e9ecf6
R number for COVID - https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0242128
Death #s for Influenza, R # for Influenza - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Influenza
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gxAaO2rsdIs
Pneumonia kills up to 4% worldwide.
I am going to use US statistics, and I am going to assume that these numbers are correct and not manipulated for political reasons (which I am sure is a factor, it always is)
https://healthdata.gov/dataset/provisional-covid-19-death-counts-sex-age-and-state
CDC statistics show for the last calendar year, COVID has about the same death rate as pneumonia in adult ranges and children are more likely to die of pneumonia than COVID, all of this despite many more people being infected with COVID than pneumonia.
Those that are vulnerable to COVID living in nursing homes/hospitals are just as much at risk of dying from pneumonia (which is rampant in those places, I can attest from having to bury a parent not too long ago) and roughly half of the reported 'COVID' deaths also had pneumonia listed as a complication.
Based on the raw numbers, I don't see how this disease (even if we are generous with statistics) is more dangerous than diseases that already exist and adversely affect the same vulnerable population in the same care facilities.
I was hospitalized with pneumonia in my twenties (I never smoked) and it was a very difficult experience. I could have died, it took me three weeks to recover enough to be discharged. I had breathing issues for a year afterward while my lungs healed.
I would rather take my chances with COVID than get pneumonia again.
I'm not seeing where the rate is, all I see if the total number of deaths which is similar, but without the number of infections it's an apples to oranges comparison. (Although I am tired so I might just not be seeing it)
But, COVID 19 is a risk factor for Pneumonia, so by taking your chances with COVID you're increasing your risk of getting Pneumonia again.
https://www.webmd.com/lung/covid-and-pneumonia#1
COVID is a risk factor for pneumonia...like all respiratory diseases are. Same goes for the common cold. There's nothing there that makes COVID unique.
There's no way there are anywhere near as many pneumonia infections as there are COVID cases. I can get stats, but I shouldn't have to.
The reality is that you cannot 'hide' the infection from the populace - we should be accepting that we will get it and scale up our medical services accordingly.
However, this is not the proposed solution. Instead, we are shuttering our economy and causing more deaths by destroying people financially.
We know the vast majority of people who catch this aren't going to die from it, so why would we take on the enormous financial burden of trying to self-contain the entire globe when it would be more effective to simply increase the options for treatment?
This solution isn't preventing deaths, it's adding to them. Domestic violence and suicides have increased significantly as a direct result of those policies, and yet we don't get 24/7 coverage of those deaths.
This is very similar to the climate change alarmism of two years ago - they say they want to reduce emissions, but the plan was actually to tax emissions and move production of those emissions from the West to China (where emissions increases were part of their plan, very strange) . Basically the goal was to transfer wealth from the West to authoritarian control.
Fun fact: The US achieved huge emissions reductions by switching to natural gas/shale. The environmental activists never like to talk about that.
The lockdowns achieved the same result. Goodbye small business. Hello Amazon and all of those cheapo goods from China. How convenient.