this post was submitted on 17 Aug 2023
939 points (93.2% liked)

World News

32326 readers
757 users here now

News from around the world!

Rules:

founded 5 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] Chriskmee@lemm.ee 3 points 1 year ago (19 children)

I know I've read reports about the latest variants being much less deadly. I did see one study recently which for patients presenting to hospital covid was a few percentage points more likely to result in death compared to hospitalized flu patients. There were a lot more covid patients though.

Found it:

death rates among people hospitalized for COVID-19 were 17% to 21% in 2020 vs 6% in this study, while death rates for those hospitalized for influenza were 3.8% in 2020 vs 3.7% in this study

https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/fullarticle/2803749

So there is some data backing up the feelings I've gotten from everything I've been hearing and seeing.

[–] Mbourgon@lemmy.world 0 points 1 year ago (12 children)

There’s one crucial thing you overlooked in this: in 2020, most people hadn’t been infected, and hadn’t gotten the vaccine (because there was no vaccine until December,and even then it was in extremely short supply). Now, most people have some sort of immunity, be it from vaccine or from a prior infection. That definitely skews the hospitalization numbers downward. You can’t compare then and now, unfortunately, since there’s no real community that hasn’t been vaccinated and hasn’t caught it - and so you can’t compare their numbers.

[–] Chriskmee@lemm.ee 1 points 1 year ago (11 children)

That's fair, but I think you can still compare it to the flu, which is not that far off from covid percentage wise. At this point both the flu and covid should be at an equal level of people having vaccines and natural antibodies, right? Even if you go with covid being about twice as deadly as the flu, twice as deadly as almost nothing is still almost nothing.

[–] holland@lemmy.ml 0 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Hundreds of thousands of Americans will die this year from COVID. Sure, almost nothing. Just a 9/11 every two weeks or so.

[–] Chriskmee@lemm.ee 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Thousands die every day from tons of other stuff also, just a part of life.

[–] holland@lemmy.ml 0 points 1 year ago (2 children)
[–] Chriskmee@lemm.ee 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)
[–] holland@lemmy.ml 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)
[–] Chriskmee@lemm.ee 0 points 1 year ago (1 children)

That reality is reality? People die of lots of different things, I'm sorry I'm that's news to you.

[–] holland@lemmy.ml 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

It's the problem that people like you let this be reality. That we just dismiss millions of preventable deaths as mere statistics rather than doing simple and easy things like wearing masks during pandemics.

[–] Chriskmee@lemm.ee 1 points 1 year ago

I wore one when I was required to and didn't wear one when I wasn't, so sorry for following the rules?

load more comments (9 replies)
load more comments (9 replies)
load more comments (15 replies)