[war1025]

> It's not apathy, it's fatigue.

I absolutely agree.

> It's been 10 months of terror and horror

I blame this squarely on the saturation coverage it has been given by media networks. People need time to hear themselves think or they'll go nuts. Politicians haven't been terribly helpful either.

I personally find it hard to get too worked up over it anymore.

When my neighbor caught it in July, I was very concerned for him. He was the first person I knew personally to catch it and I was worried for his health. Thankfully him an his wife and kid got through it fine.

Then in September another neighbor caught it, I checked in with him daily to make sure he was coming through it okay.

In October, my 98 year old grandma caught it. I thought great, this is finally the time. She's going to die from it. And then she got over it just fine.

In December, I had an aunt and uncle catch it, both in their late 60s. Both got over it just fine.

I learned the other day the reason I hadn't heard much out of one of my best friends is that just before Christmas him and his wife caught it. They also got over it just fine.

Heard this weekend that another of my neighbors had it in their house. Also getting over it perfectly fine.

I don't say all that to discount the tragedy for those who have died from it. It's a terrible thing and I wish it hadn't happened.

But we were sold Ebola by the media, and we got an unusually deadly seasonal flu.

[fistfucker3000]

It's the knock on effects we're concerned about. The extra strain on the healthcare system:

- endangers the lives of healthcare workers (they're absolutely burnt out at this point) - makes people not go to the doctor for necessary health issues - causes other emergencies to not be serviced

[belltaco]

Thats a series of anectdata, which will happen in any data set.

>But we were sold Ebola by the media, and we got an unusually deadly seasonal flu.

The current death toll is after lockdowns, social distancing, mask wearing, staggered hospitalizations etc. Without those the death toll would be in the millions, how is that just a unusually deadly seasonal flu? A bad flu season is 65k deaths. Current death toll is ~400k.

[GuB-42]

Ebola actually killed less in the world in total than a single flu season in the US.

With all the talk about it is almost sounds like Covid-19 is a death sentence. It is not, it is a statistical increase. GP know 8 Covid-19 mild cases and zero severe. Let's estimate the chance of severe Covid-19 over reported cases to about 1/10. That's a probability of 43%, GP's experience is typical.

One interesting bit of stats I've seen is that catching Covid-19 roughly doubles your chances of dying this year, regardless of your age. It is a lot but still in the realm of statistics.

And as you probably know, we are very bad at judging statistics instinctively, and for most of us, it is all we have. Otherwise, most people would stop smoking. If Covid-19 can (statistically) cost you one year of your life, smoking costs you 10.

[war1025]

> how is that just a unusually deadly seasonal flu

A smaller percentage of a very large number is still a very large number.

In March / April, people were claiming something on the order of a >10% fatality rate. We are much closer to 1%, and it drops off down to practically nothing once you get to anyone below middle-age.

[loudmax]

I don't know what news outlets you were following, but medical reports were indicating a case fatality rate around 0.3% by April. This works out to something like 1 in 300.

Since the fatalities skew heavily toward the elderly, in practice this means if everyone catches Covid, most people are unlikely to have a close personal friend or relative who dies as a result of the disease. Sounds not too bad, right?

A fatality rate of 0.3% also means that if everyone in the United States catches it, a million people will die. We're coming up on the equivalent of a 9/11 every day (though again, skewing heavily toward the elderly). You can't rely on personal experience to put these kinds of numbers into perspective.

[war1025]

> This works out to something like 1 in 300.

> A fatality rate of 0.3% also means that if everyone in the United States catches it, a million people will die

Exactly.

The first sounds completely acceptable. The second sounds unacceptable. They are exactly the same number, just worded differently for effect.

If you go with "Dunbar's Number" of 150 people that a single person can meaningfully maintain a social relationship with, that means if everyone in the US caught coronavirus, statistically you would have a 50% chance of knowing someone that died of it. Those seem like perfectly acceptable odds.

I think that cuts to the core of it. It's a tragic situation, but it is unclear whether it is catastrophic. That means we should be unsurprised that society is pretty evenly split over whether the measures we've taken have been too much or too little.