Number of actual cases - Page 4

I know lots of people who have lost elderly parents friends and family to covid19 in U.K. and Ireland. All these elderly survived winter without contracting flu (which most will have been vaccinated against) but were killed by covid. It isnt scaremongering by the press It’s reality. I also have friends in Madrid who’s medical services practically collapsed  due to number of patients with covid and lack of resources. Is that scaremongering too. Don’t be complacent because you think this is exaggerated by the press it’s really really isn’t!!!!

I will add I also know medical staff In their 20s dead from covid so it doesn’t discriminate on age in all cases!

Maybe scaremongering is not the right word because it implies some degree of deliberate intent (a kind of Project Fear); but scaring people has been an outcome, and an outcome that has served to assist Government in containing population movement etc.as means of controlling COVID infections.

The approach adopted, globally amongst developed countries, will not be an option should anything similar arise again - if only because it will never be affordable again, given the direct financial costs to governments (over £350bn in the UK in support measures and underpinning the financial markets) and the wideranging economic impacts. 

In particular future policy will surely be far more targeted, and I'm sure would have been this time round if there had been more attention given to forward planning. And in this regard, depending on the nature of any future pandemic, governments would almost certainly pay due attention to factors such as mortality amongst different age groups when determining their reaction. When you look at the UK Office for National Statistics (ONS) figures as at 10th April (the latest available from that section of Government) and see that at that stage deaths in the 0-39y.o. age bands totalled 'only' 82 (less than 1%) out the 10,335 registered deaths involving the COVID-19 virus then you have to question the blanket approach that has been adopted in regard to lockdown and business closures -- particularly when you take into account that the under 40s account for half the total population. 

Agree with both of you, I woukd also like to kmoe the answers?

H1N1 is the same flu virus that circulated in 1918. The last pandemic of H1N1 was 2009 when it was more deadly to the under 60s as one third of people over 60 were found to have antibodies already.

Flu kills 150,000 - 600,000 annually depending upon the season. Covid is approaching 1 million deaths and it’s barely got started.

The H1N1 pandemic in 1918-19 killed upwards of 50m.

deaths from covid in the US are 200,000 and rising - that’s some flu....

flu has a mortality rate of about 0.1%, covid is at least 10 times that.

Covid uses the ACE2 receptors to enter the body so although tagged as a respiratory disease, it infects lungs, heart, kidneys, liver, spleen and intestines. Those that have cheated death have been left on dialysis, blind, with liver failure and other life changing conditions.

the article you quote is from March and a lot has changed and a lot has been learnt since then.

The key point about covid versus flu is that as it is so new, no one has an automatic immunity or protection against the disease.

unlike flu, people infected with covid can be infectious but asymptomatic so it can more easily be transmitted. Even when symptomatic, people are infectious for up to a week before symptoms show. That’s why it’s important to limit interactions as you just dont know whose got it until it’s too late.

In addition to the small number of people who die (a personal tragedy in each case nonetheless), about 10% of those infected go on to develop long term problems and the full extent of that isn’t known.

the major problem is neither of these for the rest of us. With no natural defence, left unchecked it will spread exponentially. That isn’t a problem for the 70-80% who may get ill and get better or for those that get covid but don’t know. The issue is the remainder that need to go to hospital.

Imagine 50,000 cases a day and so 5,000 are admitted to hospital each day. It doesn’t take long for hospitals to get full. That’s a problem for those with covid who need treatment and also for everybody else in need of medical assistance who can’t get it - hence deaths are calculated as excess over usual deaths rather than just by covid alone. 

Everyone needs to take it seriously because we can’t let our health systems get overwhelmed otherwise everyone suffers. So it doesn’t really matter where it’s more, lees of as fatal as anything else, it’s a case of keeping numbers down until we have another answer - a vaccine perhaps.