[aianus]

> Fear is the right response to pneumonia

Yes, but not so much fear that you ride out your stroke or heart attack at home because you think venturing out of your house and into the ER is wading into certain death via pneumonia.

That is the level of fear that the media has induced in some people and it's even more dangerous (at the individual level) than too little fear.

[jeromegv]

The media? Or social media? Or random blogs and forums? It’s easy to accuse a general “media” but we get bombarded by so much content that it’s hard to really pinpoint who’s doing the fear mongering. Anecdata, I found the coverage in my city (Toronto) being much more accurate by the traditional large media than the random crap I’ve been reading on twitter / local reddit / click-baity blogs. And I wouldn’t put the 24 hours cable news channel in the same category as the newspaper either. “Medias” can mean so many things.

[ashtonkem]

So far COVID-19 has killed 0.25% of NYC, with that number continuing to rise. The idea that fear is more dangerous than that is facile.

Edit: Updated fatality percentage from 0.16% to 0.25%, to reflect the latest numbers.

[aianus]

I live in Ontario where ~250 people get diagnosed with malignant tumors on an average day vs. 500 people getting diagnosed with COVID at the peak of the pandemic (now ~350).

Months after the lockdown started and the surge was successfully averted, we're still not doing cancer surgeries and diagnostics. I don't understand how this level of fear and conservatism is saving more people than it's hurting. COVID is nowhere near as dangerous as a malignant tumor.

There is a middle ground of appropriate fear that we've blown past.

[Gibbon1]

What if Ontario was like new York State? Then Ontario with a pop of 14M vs 19.5M would have lost around 15,000 people not 1600 as current.

There is also this assumption that people will haplessly get infected as if they were livestock. Which they are not. The will stop going up, stop spending money, avoiding work if they can. That's baked in and not something the government imposes. Except to impose order on the process. An orderly early lockdown is better than a late chaotic panicked one.

[fuckknows]

No it's absolutely not. Your risk of dying, or of having life altering chronic illness, from not immediately seeking medical attention if you are having a heart attack or stroke is far higher than your risk from COVID, and those people aren't showing up at hospital right now.

[ashtonkem]

Update: updated the stat to 0.25%, based on the official fatality count of 21,045 and a population of 8.4mil.

In 2018, NYC’s premature death rate was 189 per 100,000, or 0.189% of the population. In a single quarter COVID-19 has already surpassed all causes of premature death combined. And that’s before the epidemic is done, and before we’ve had a chance to re-test earlier deaths to adjust the numbers properly.

You’re not wrong that some people will die from otherwise treatable heart attacks, and that’s tragic. But to assert that more will die from staying home than not requires some pretty extraordinary evidence.

[joshuamorton]

This is a terrible take.

Assuming you have a heart attack, your chance of dying is 20%. Higher if you don't get treatment.

That's as high or higher than your chance of dying from covid-19 assuming you're in the highest risk group.

A conservative estimate of likelihood to catch covid if you go to a hospital at this point is 5%. In reality it's probably lower.

These end up mostly cancelling out, so if you the I the chance you're suffering from a heart attack is higher than the chance of catching covid you should go to the hospital. (And this is me still fudging the numbers to make covid look comparatively more dangerous than it really is).

People will needlessly sir if we collectively overstate tht dangers of covid. That's without a doubt true. People will also die if we understate them and don't take reasonable precautions.

[SomeoneFromCA]

> A conservative estimate of likelihood to catch covid if you go to a hospital at this point is 5%.

Really? Where is this number form?

[joshuamorton]

The fact that hospitals aren't pouring new Covid patients out of their ears. Major hospitals are handling lots of cases, and have many more than one hundred employees. They're not hotbeds of transmission, from what I've seen.

You're certainly at more risk in a hospital than at home, but it's not that crazy. Since it seems like you're in the bay area, consider that for the chance to even be 5%, something like most new Covid cases in the bay would need to come from hospital employees or patients. I don't think that's happening.

[hanche]

What is the definition of premature death?

[derefr]

What about the people who have the symptoms of COVID-19, where it's not severe enough for them to be hospitalized for that, so the messaging is for them to self-quarantine; but then they also get struck with some other problem (such as a heart attack)? I feel like I've heard no clear messaging on what such people are supposed to do, even from the most rational/level-headed medical authorities.

I imagine being in those shoes feels a lot like it would have to need surgery when you're HIV positive, back when HIV was an eventual death sentence: you'd feel guilt/shame for exposing your doctors to this coincidental problem you have, that might get them sick.

And so these people don't go, and end up dying of these other problems, likely at a much higher level than the people who are just staying indoors out of paranoia.

[IAmEveryone]

If you have a heart attack you call 911. There hasn’t been much messaging about that because, frankly, it’s assumed to be obvious.

[derefr]

People tend to call 911 while they're having a heart attack; but a first heart attack doesn't tend to kill people, so if they live through it, they tend to think it isn't an urgent problem in need of calling 911, and instead just go to the hospital at their earliest convenience. The problem here guilt/shame delaying "earliest convenience."

[aianus]

Washing your hands and covering your mouth while you cough is obvious too; that doesn't mean the messaging is unnecessary.

[rumanator]

It isn't obvious, unless you happen to suffer from hypochondria.