I suggest everyone listen to the latest Daily episode on COVID: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/06/podcasts/the-daily/coronavirus-science-indoor-infection.html

To summarize (italicized is my commentary):

1. It appears that this disease is a vascular disease as opposed to respiratory. That means we're missing A LOT of cases b/c they might not show certain symptoms. Because it's a vascular disease, it affects the entire body and the long term effects could be dangerous. Imagine if we find out 40 years from now that we have way more cases of dementia/stroke dude to micro-clotting?
2. It's likely that the Italian strain of COVID is 5-10x more infectious than the Wuhan strain. Viral mutations appear to occur every 2 weeks or so; not all mutations affect transmission or death rates.
3. Transmission seems to be heavily mitigated by being outdoors. As long as you're 6 feet apart, you should be fine. From an economics perspective, we could leverage this information to maximize economic output and minimize transmission.
4. Children do not appear to be transmitters because their body responds to the disease differently. For instance, instead of coughing/sneezing, they may get inflammation instead. It's probably safe to open elementary schools and perhaps middle schools in the fall.

outdoor classrooms and workspaces it is

Why are you both trying so hard to act like it was perfectly normal to think this virus wasn't a big deal at the time though? I just showed it was, the numbers far outstripped SARS at that point, plus the virus was confirmed in countries across the world.

Manipulating death figures to exclude the epicentre of the outbreak is laughable. Data at the time also showed a 3% mortality rate, far higher than other coronaviruses, and you'd have known Bazi that as a new virus there would be no immunity.

I'm not going after you personally, I was just interested in what rational way a medical professional might come to that conclusion. I suspect you were equating COVID-19 to your knowledge of other coronaviruses without considering the lack of immunity, mortality rate and the ease of spread, but correct me if I'm wrong.

I'd rather switch to online learning as much as possible. We have a golden opportunity to modernize our education and cater to individual needs.

As for workspaces, it really depends on the industry.

Think we need educational settings to match expectation. I heard university level students having to watch Prof do labs for example..... huge pillar of science is doing them yourself. Maybe solo lab days or something. Online learning seems to work well with the already educated and those with skin in the game, but for k-12 eek. I'd be fragging all day on PC.

This post was edited by RedFromWinter on Jul 7 2020 02:51pm

agreed, with the caveat that the current online learning is pretty subpar. tremendous opportunity for growth and improvement though

This isn’t SARS though, sars was a disease minimally contagious and incredibly lethal. Now nor then has this behaved anything similar to SARS with whopping double digit mortality rates and very low virulence. There was really no evidence at the time of my post to suggest it was anything atypical of any new coronavirus. Not sure if you know but every year there are new types of coronavirus that emerge all over the world. Immunity is always lacking, every year. It his highly contagious, as it is every year (which I have reiterated several times already). Which is why a lot of the public experience cold like symptoms year to year.

3% mortality rate in what countries as of 2/2 where you linked my post? I have been critical of Chinese numbers from the beginning and now and said I didn’t believe them. Clearly I was wrong in ignoring some of the Chinese data, where I have already conceded. Is there data outside of the Chinese data that backs up those mortality and hospitalization rates, at the time you are referencing? If other countries were also demonstrating a 3% mortality rate aside from China then that was oversight on my part as of 2/2

It is frankly easy to figure out why majority of medical community was underwhelmed early Feb.

This post was edited by Bazi on Jul 7 2020 03:12pm

I didn't say it was like SARS, I referenced the numbers being higher than SARS to illustrate the point that it was extremely serious even in early Feb. Let's not deflect.

If COVID-19 was like other coronaviruses, you wouldn't see deaths in those numbers in that short timeframe though, would you?

Also, on the point about immunity, wouldn't there be residual immunity from a coronavirus that's been in circulation for many years even when it mutates into a new strain in a following winter? Just to confirm, that's the type of immunity I'm referring to that would be present in those coronaviruses and not COVID-19.

You are correct in that the 3% mortality rate was derived from Chinese data, but surely being sceptical of Chinese numbers would mean thinking the reported figures were LOWER than actuals, not the other way around?

You absolutely were making it personal lol. How else is somebody supposed to interpret "Aren't you doctors" and specifically quoting their posts from 5 months ago lol

Still, it doesn't really matter, physicians aren't virology or pandemic experts because they are physicians, nor are they necessarily following every breaking development of a novel virus.

This post was edited by Thor123422 on Jul 7 2020 03:31pm

Voyager got a lot of stick for his comment about Trump not winning the presidency and got sent to the shadow realm for it, which wasn't personal.

I was reading through the thread and it was interesting to see Bazi, ThatAlex and Skinned playing down the virus the most when they were the only people to my knowledge in a medical or care field. Nobody said they were epidemiologists, but I'm sure we'd all agree they know more than the rest of us.