The ‘good’ of COVID-19

[Forestluv]

18 hours ago, SamueLSD said:

Doesn't really make a difference, they all kill around half a million people every year, making panic over this disease unnecessary.

This is comparing the coronavirus to an ordinary virus. This would be like comparing a benign tumor to a malignant tumor and saying "They are both cancer".

As well, it's not just the yearly death toll. The distribution is important as well. 100,000 thousand cases per month for a yearly total of 1.2 million is much different than 400,00 cases per month for three months - also a yearly total of 1.2 million. The second scenario would overwhelm hospital capacity, which would yield massive societal problems. Already, some cities are designating entire hospitals to covid-19 treatment. This significantly reduces the health care system's capacity to treat the baseline number of illnesses in the community. 

The coronavirus has traits that make it much much more dangerous than a common flu virus. The elevated concern is warranted. From my pov, most people are underestimating the virus.  

Looking at current stats is insufficient. It's important to look further down the curve, considering the R0 and exponential growth. If we were in a car traveling at 100kph with an exponential increase of 1.26 per minute, we have a serious problem on our hands. Saying "We are only traveling 110kph right now" is very short-sighted. It's also important to forecast that in a few minutes we will be traveling at over 300kph if we don't take action to slow down now.  

Educating the public about the severity of an outbreak is one of the hardest things for epidemiologists. The reason death tolls are relatively low at this point are due to draconian anti-spreading measures. If China didn't take massive action to stop the spreading - the virus would have spread through China and caused orders of magnitude more deaths. 

Public panic during a pandemic is not helpful, yet neither is the attitude "It's just another virus, the common flu causes more deaths". From an epidemiology perspective, the public should understand the danger of this virus, take it seriously and voluntarily take anti-spreading preventions.   

Due to the R0 of the coronavirus, if we treat it like a common flu virus, we are looking at numbers that will blow away the impact of all common viruses combined. Perhaps 500 million deaths compared to 0.5 million deaths. As well as deaths, there is joblessness, bankruptcies, associated deaths due to hospital strain, etc.

 

[Arcangelo]

20 hours ago, SamueLSD said:

Doesn't really make a difference, they all kill around half a million people every year, making panic over this disease unnecessary.

You don't get it you are thinking like a stage orange person. You need more systems thinking. Leo has a video on that.

[Vladz0r]

As a Math Teacher, I have to say that this would be a great lesson on exponential growth by comparing different countries' responses to covid-19.

[pluto]

A few thousand people are dying but the whole planet is healing. billions of species recovering,  pollution clearing, waters cleaning, rivers flowing, forests regenerating, lungs of the earth are healing up, noise stopping ect.. There is much more good out of this than bad and there is no good and bad anyway, they don't apply to the laws of nature.

We are basically letting the earth breathe for a month. We should do this at least once a year. It will be like meditation and fasting for the earth(our greater body) thus ourselves and our collective consciousness will far greater.

 

 

Edited March 21, 2020 by pluto

[SamueLSD]

On 20/03/2020 at 2:41 AM, Serotoninluv said:

It's important to look further down the curve

Well, time will tell. I will gladly admit I was wrong if I am

[Forestluv]

4 hours ago, SamueLSD said:

Well, time will tell. I will gladly admit I was wrong if I am

Time is already telling.

[Bill W]

Pubs have closed in the UK which is good. I'm hoping when all this has blown over that they decide we didn't need pubs anyway and they stay closed. 

[Preety_India]

5 hours ago, Bill W said:

we didn't need pubs anyway

Don't say that to a Brit 

@Bill W you know the brits can't live without the beer and the tea. And I can't live without coffee.

 

Edited March 21, 2020 by Preety_India

[jake473]

I dont feel as much love for the people dying as I would want to. Humans have slaughtered so many lives, humans and animals. Maybe this is how it feels when something is trying to kill you. The economy stuff scares me because it threatens my survival, but from my point of view even if 1% of humans died and collective consciousness raised 20% that sounds like an absolute win. I say its about time humanity stopped destroying everything.

[Thewritersunion]

Billions of dollars of free data. lol

[unicity]

Colorado shelter sees every animal get adopted during COVID-19 outbreak

https://www.foxnews.com/us/colorado-shelter-every-animal-adopted-covid-19-outbreak

[Space]

Whilst this virus is seriously affecting a lot of peoples lives in a bad way, i'm kinda loving life at the moment. Getting to work from home is a joy - no commute, much more relaxed work day, I can focus much more easily when needed, no unnecessary work-socialising stuff, and of course i'm still getting my full salary. I feel so fortunate and grateful for my situation. I hope that going forward companies will be much more lenient and flexible about letting people work from home. It's given me a taste of what it would be like to be a freelancer and now thats definitely something i'm gonna work towards. 

I have so much more energy and motivation to put into other things, like my artwork, meditation and exercise because it hasn't all been spent with going to work in an office all day which can be extremely mentally and physically tiring. You can't properly relax, where as at home its so much more chilled. I can take a 15 break if I want to. I can draw in my sketchbook for 10 minutes if I have an interesting idea. I can also do micro meditations, for like 10/15 minutes throughout the day - something you obviously can't do in an office. I can do all that and still deliver the work that I need to do. In fact my productivity with work has increased significantly. 

London is also so quiet and peaceful. Obviously i'm not going out much but its lovely when I do. The parks are beautiful at this time of year as well - made even better with the lack of people about. Imagine if it was like this all the time but just without this terrible virus. God bless those who are being affected by it.

Anyone else loving the self-isolation life? 

Edited March 29, 2020 by Space

[Rookie]

@Space It's great, isn't it? 

I'm already a freelancer so life hasn't changed that much for me, but I am excited to see an up-shoot in remote work due by the pandemic. Life tastes so much sweeter when you don't have to deal with a daily commute and office politics. 

If all goes well this will become permanent for you, along with millions of other workers.  

[Revolutionary Think]

9 hours ago, Space said:

Whilst this virus is seriously affecting a lot of peoples lives in a bad way, i'm kinda loving life at the moment. Getting to work from home is a joy - no commute, much more relaxed work day

What's the job you're doing? 

[Space]

7 hours ago, Revolutionary Think said:

What's the job you're doing? 

Work in digital advertising

[Gabor Bardosi]

Kinda like the half full of water thinking. In prison you have more time for self reflection.
In the video where Leo talks about how can you be happy and fulfilled in capture even if it's non-just.

Edited March 30, 2020 by Gabor Bardosi

[Revolutionary Think]

The passing of the torch 

  

[Scholar]

On 19.3.2020 at 1:45 AM, SamueLSD said:

Doesn't really make a difference, they all kill around half a million people every year, making panic over this disease unnecessary.

If anything that makes my point more valid, as you can't cure all of them, it's basically impossible with our current technology 

Just look at how many doctors are dying in italy from this virus, and how overwhelmed hospitals are. When did this happen with the common flu?

[SamueLSD]

3 hours ago, Scholar said:

Just look at how many doctors are dying in italy from this virus, and how overwhelmed hospitals are. When did this happen with the common flu?

Yeah it is pretty sudden I gotta admit.

In its entirety though, it isn't that bad. There is a sever flu outbreak every few decades, this is no surprise. 

[silene]

If so many governments are  (quite rightly) introducing schemes to protect people's jobs and companies from going down, they must be borrowing a heck of a lot of money for it (when we were just about getting govt deficits onto an even keel after the credit crunch). Who are we borrowing it from, the banks or cash rich countries? There's an upside for the creditors, perhaps one reason why governments have cut interest rates too! 

Edited April 3, 2020 by silene