re: Coronavirus vs cancer

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It’s not my responsibility to ensure your health and safety. It’s not your responsibility for me. In the end, your chances of dying from cancer are exponentially higher than dying of covid-19. By all means, keep scream to the heavens about how deadly this is.

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You're not understanding. Nobody is screaming that this is more deadly than cancer.

You can do all you want to mitigate the risk of cancer, but it may or may not work. The rate of cancer isn't going down in this country without something happening that we don't understand. A healthy 22 year old can get cancer because of a gene mutation and not know it until they are knocking on death's door even if they've done everything right.

With COVID-19, if everyone does everything right, we can see in real-time, the case count and death count go down due to the measures being implemented. That doesn't happen with cancer. Take all the measures you want to prevent a certain type of cancer and it may not make a difference depending on your family history and DNA. Nobody is randomly getting COVID. Every COVID death is, in theory, preventable. Now, that's not to say we could practically save every single person, but we can DRASTICALLY reduce the death rate by working together to not overload the hospital system.

Also, there are so many different types of cancer. You're being vague when you say "cancer". Prostate cancer is far more deadly than melanoma, yet they are both cancer. There is a single COVID-19. Yes it is one of many coronaviruses, but it is a single virus that we understand how it's spread and how to eliminate it from surfaces.

Frankly, I can't believe I'm having to have this conversation with a grown person.

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So we're just dealing with a new contagious disease that is likely several times more deadly than the next most deadly one. No big deal?

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It is about as deadly as flu was before we developed a vaccine and antivirals. So pre1977 flu. Once the best treatment plan is developed after the results from all the trials come back within the next month, the mortality rate will drop between 50-70% putting it in line with the flu.

Mortality rate for healthy people between 20-50 is the same as the flu. Mortality rate for people under 20 is lower than the flu.

Mortality rate for people with hypertension, obesity, or over 65 is 10 times the flu.

Cancer is a whole different type of bad. About half of the people who read this will die from cancer. You are more likely to be diagnosed with a cancer that will be terminal through every age group this year, than die from coronavirus this year.

Cancer is much worse than coronavirus. It will be killing 500k a year when coronavirus is a distant memory.

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FYI the US stats were just updated, and the daily deaths are at 1,476. There are still 7 hours left in the daily reporting period, which means we are about 70% of the way to our final daily total. If this pace holds, we will end up with nearly 2,100 covid deaths today.

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Another update, 1,557 with 6 hours to go. Slight drop in pace, but still tracking for nearly 2,100 by EOD.

If by Tuesday we haven't reached 2,500 daily, then I will begin to think we are approaching the downside.

It really is amazing how dumb people in the USA are. We like to mock others, but we can be pretty embarrassing ourselves

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We pass normal flu from one person to another. And it claimed 61k American lives in 2018.

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The normal flu's R/0 (degree of transmission) is 1.3. Covid 19 is average 2.9-5.7. That means that every person who gets infected spreads it to 3-6 people compared to 1 person for flu.

Also, it is more deadly percentage wise and has killed 18000 in 3-4 weeks with the entire country shutdown while flu killed 61k over the span of a year with the entire country open

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serious question: based on your understanding of COVID-19, all factors included, what would be a safe assumption on when life does go back to normal?

Or will it not until we do have an effective vaccine to mitigate mortality rate of those infected?

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I have no idea.

Personally, though, I am not at all convinced that we should have shut down at all. You can check my post history, I've said time and again that I don't think the cost is anywhere near worth the benefit. We can't stop living for fear of dying all the time. As with every other risk we face, it has to be weighed against other factors. We could save a whole lot of lives by banning all sorts of things (like personal vehicles), but we don't and shouldn't because it would cost too much money and freedom. Whether consciously or subconsciously, we place a value on a life and that works its way into our decision-making.

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Just saying.

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just saying what??

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So we only care about death if could possibly affect us or a loved one?

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Correct

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We pass normal flu from one person to another. And it claimed 61k American lives in 2018.

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Is it just me or is this number steadily increasing as the Covid19 count increases. People compared it to swine flu, saying it would not kill 12,000 people. Then it moved up to, "the flu killed 30,0000 last year". Now it has moved up to 60k. I feel like in 2 weeks a poster is gonna make a post claiming "but the flu killed 100k last year".

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Update again, 1,708 with 5 hours to go. On pace for 2,150-ish now. This does not give me hope that we have peaked.

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Looks like reporting is done for the day, and thankfully the last few hours were not as active as the rest of the day. Today's total is 1,830, which is good news for the idea that we are almost on the back side of it. Although we are also just 1 day removed from the high, so I am cautiously optimistic.

I still say give it until Tuesday before identifying a downtrend. Then we probably have a long road ahead to slowly open things back up while keeping an eye on the trends.