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by jhpriestley
2075 days ago
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I've been reading about this virus daily since February and my impression has been the opposite. It's a very boring virus which has offered very few surprises. We knew since February that it is a flu-like respiratory disease with high rates of hospitalization and death, especially among the old. The initial estimates for fatality rate were about 4% and that has now been narrowed to 1% based on better testing and treatment. Social distancing and masks are effective at controlling the spread. All of this has been known since February/March, most of it is spelled out here: https://www.who.int/docs/default-source/coronaviruse/who-chi... At the same time, there has been an endless parade of contrarians trying to make the whole thing into a big mystery and muddy the waters for some reason. There was the theory that the virus was spreading much earlier than expected. There was the theory that most cases were asymptomatic and that immunity had already been reached. The theory that lockdowns are not effective. The theory that there were different strains with highly different behavior. Some vague theory about t-cell immunity. None of these contrarian theories have been supported by any real evidence, but there is a large appetite for them and people will seize on any puzzling number to try to rethink the whole picture of the virus. |
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1) the death rate is still unclear because very few localities have done sufficient and/or the right kind of testing to answer this in a definitive way.
2) initial estimates about hospitalization across age cohorts seem to have turned out to be fairly far off. Tracking the stats for my own state (New Mexico; admittedly a fairly small population), we sometimes have almost flat hospitalization rates across age cohorts.
That report was dated 16-24 February 2020. It was authoritative at the time of writing (hard not to be given the limited breakouts outside of Wuhan at that time), and the reporting on the physical structure and mechanisms of the virus have remained largely unchanged AFAIK.
But the epidemiological aspects of covid19 have, I think, changed quite a bit since that report. The report doesn't in fact coe down strongly in favor of masks:
"The relative importance of non-pharmaceutical control measures including masks, hand hygiene, and social distancing require further research to quantify their impact."
and in the section titled "Knowledge Gaps" includes "Effectiveness of the public health control measures and their socio-economic impact ... * Wearing mask in general public", along with most "lockdown" type policies.