jimmy_nova wrote:
A vaccine isn't coming for a while. In the meantime though, there will likely be drugs to treat patients with the virus. Additionally, the virus seems slow to mutate, so those who've already had it hopefully have immunity for a while, and the eventual vaccine will likely be more effective than current flu vaccines.
I also suspect that the number of infections is significantly higher than the reported positive cases, with a lot of mild and asymptomatic cases, which means COVID-19 is likely less dangerous than many people think (that's not to downplay the seriousness of the situation; we should all still abide by the lockdown restrictions, but at least I want to bring some positive thoughts to this discussion).
I agree with you. I’ve been trying to explain your last point to people for a while. We know when someone does of covid-19 regardless of whether they were diagnosed prior to or not. There might be a few deaths that slip through the cracks, but by and large, we know the numbers. So, if we have 100 deaths in 10,000 cases, that’s a 1% mortality rate, however, if we have 10,000 known cases, we actually probably have 20-30,000 cases, but with the same number of deaths, so the mortality rate is actually probably closer to 0.5% or even 0.3%. I do echo your sentiment that it’s important to take it seriously regardless. Many of the deaths in Italy were not from the virus itself, it’s because so many people got sick all at once that they couldn’t get treatment. That’s the key. If we get lots of infections but they’re staggered over a long period, we’re fine. If we get a bunch all at once, it’s a problem.
And yeah, there are a few medications already that are being used, and a few others that are being tested. The problem, of course, is that many of these medications are not commonly prescribed, so many places don’t have much of them in stock, but again, if we all do our part and keep numbers as low as possible, it buys time to produce/order more.
As for immunity, thus far is does seem like once someone recovers, they’re immune. I haven’t heard of any cases of reinfection and I do know that in experiments with macaques, they were unable to reinfect monkeys that had previously been infected. So that’s good news. Really, there is quite a lot to be optimistic about, you just wouldn’t know it since the media’s still doing its fearmongering thing.