07-01-2020, 02:48 PM
(07-01-2020, 02:28 PM)AussieBengal Wrote: Looking at Australia's and New Zealand's result here can be beneficial, because out of any countries in the world Australia and New Zealand would be closest to capturing all cases in their country. Australia's case fatality rate comes in at 1.3% and New Zealand's at 1.4%, that is some pretty solid data and both countries have had widespread testing and aggressive contact tracing, so it appears in countries that keep this under control we are looking at a CFR of around 1.3%. What is interesting is what happens once health systems get overwhelmed during a severe outbreak, Italy has a CFR 14.4% and it is over 2 months since they past their peak.
The key with Covid 19 is to prevent your health system from being overwhelmed because once you are overwhelmed the death rate soars and it also has a huge impact on other illnesses in your hospitals as well because they can not be adequately treated so people start dying from other issues non covid because they do not get the care they usually would. It is also worth noting that once your health system is overwhelmed you start to see deaths in younger age brackets as well. The scary thing is once the health system is overwhelmed health systems go in to a triage system where only people with a chance of surviving are treated, where decisions have to be made over who gets to use the ventilator as there are not enough to go around.
What many people fail to realise is the worst pandemics are not the ones that kill a large % of people quickly, they usually burn themselves out as dead people are not walking around infecting others, the worst ones are the diseases that have a high contagious rate, act slowly enough or have a lower death that they are able to infect a great number of people. Covid 19 is not going to wipe out a huge percentage of the population, but it is a good indication of how we will deal with a worse pandemic and the signs are not good. What happens when we get a disease that is as contagious as say measles and has a death rate of around 5%, do you think the signs are looking good for us dealing with that?
What is needed in a pandemic is fast decisive action, the Asian countries already know this through exposure to other epidemics and pandemics in the past, that is why they moved quickly into lockdowns, they have been through the bird and swine flus in the past. Australia and New Zealand showed this and I think will move even quicker in the future. England, Italy and many parts of Europe really messed this up but appear to have learnt lessons from this pandemic. How do well do you think the US has dealt with this crisis? How prepared do you think they are if in 2 years time we have a worse pandemic than this one? Will there reaction be quicker next time or slower? Will people be more likely or less likely to follow advice? Are lessons being learnt from what is happening now? The US is supposed to be the World power so should be leading the world in this. Are they doing this? Why weren't they prepare this time? Do you believe they will be for the next pandemic that could be worse than this one?
Excellent, thank you.
