Sorry if this comes across as too personal, but I’m offering it as a general statement on behalf my generation and also (perhaps) to help you “young’ns” understand how some of us might be feeling when we strongly encourage people in Newton to engage in more intense personal hygiene and greater social distancing.
As you get older, your mind often remains at a younger perceived age. The decades go by, but you don’t think of yourself as old. Yes, you start having colonoscopies at age 50 or so. And then, at your annual physical, your MD starts to use a calculator (based on age, blood pressure, weight, etc) to tell you the likelihood of having heart disease in the subsequent ten years. But what does it really mean if your probability of that is 8 or 10%? It’s pretty abstract and easily forgotten.
But then comes COVID-19, and you see a chart from the WHO that indicates that the probability of dying if you are infected by the virus at age 70 is 8%, and at age 80 is 15%. From a single episode. That’s a lot different from some statistical probability of heart disease over the next decade. And it is a lot higher than if you are under 50, where the probability is 1% and less.
The spread of the virus, though, doesn’t recognize age, and so we need everyone’s help to protect everyone. Because of my professional background, I’m now receiving reports from friends and colleagues in Italy, where the healthcare system has become overwhelmed by cases, and the medical staff in hospitals describe the situation as comparable to a war zone. For example, Lombardy is the most developed region in Italy and has a extraordinary good healthcare. The hospitals are running at 200% capacity. Doctors and nurses and respiratory therapists are exhausted and simply not able to treat people and are watching them die.
The goal here now is mitigation, to try to slow the spread of the disease so it does not drown our healthcare system. Please help do your part even if you are not personally at great risk: Your older neighbors are. Thanks.
Paul, what evidence do you have that “young n’s” are any less hygienic or sensible than “your generation”? Nobody wants to contract or transmit coronavirus. I have yet to meet any young person who is less concerned about the virus because his or her chance of dying from it is lower.
@Michael: I can only speak anecdotally, but I think Paul is onto something.
Michael – I think Paul was referring to the pervasive and palpable anxiety that those over 60 are experiencing at this point. Everyone is taking this seriously, but the reports out of Italy are frightening to anyone at high risk. It’s just different when you’re in the high risk group.
No offense meant, @Michael, but as Greg and Jane note, I’ve picked up a noticeable difference in inclination–especially with regard to the social distancing issue, and even hand shaking (which translates to hygiene)–among my friends and colleagues of different ages. Please note that I wasn’t accusing anybody of being less sensible. It is not a time for accusations of any sort.
There’s a lot of both good and bad information out there about COVID-19. I’ve been posting articles on my FB page that in my professional opinion (statistician doing medical research) are reported as factually accurately as possible and are helpful. I have made these posts public – please feel free to share them.
https://www.facebook.com/mwarshaw
Thanks, Meredith.
Who me? I should take some things more seriously? But I’m not old.
If it weren’t for my grown kids pestering me I could easily forget that I’ve made it to the age where there is an 8% chance of dying from catching COVID 19.
Even one of my grandkids who is in his high school play has said I don’t have to come but if I have to choose between the Roast and his play – he calls dibs.
Governor Baker just correctly called a state of emergency. A few other governors also have. I doubt any mass gatherings are going to be happening – which is the right decision.
… just for a little perspective though, the individual risk of serious injury or death from standard run-of-the-mill flu is much higher than from Covid19 (20,000-50,000 US deaths from Oct-March). The worrying aspect of Covid19 is not the risk to you today but the fact it is a new additional risk and has the potential to grow as bad or worse than flu over time.
The good news is, all of the recommendations for slowing the spread of Covid19 are equally effective in slowing the spread of influenza.
So a hearty kick in the shins (no backslaps allowed) to Paul for reminding us all to do our part to keep old gits like me healthy.
Jerry, as other commenters have pointed out and it’s counterintuitive I know, but COVID 19 is not comparable to the mostly understood time periods and reactions to seasonal flu. It’s a different type of virus and outbreaks of novel (new) virus infections among people are always of public health concern.
My grown children and I are paying much more attention to this outbreak than with the flu, after getting a flu vaccine. My son lives with me and is both a math teacher and a health care worker. He uses hand sanitizer (which btw needs to be at least 62% alcohol) before he comes in the door and showers and changes clothes right after.
This virus is caused by one virus, the novel 2019 coronavirus, now called severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2, or SARS-CoV-2, and the disease it causes is named “coronovirus disease 2019” (COVID-19).
The SARS-CoV-2 virus is a betacoronavirus, like MERS-CoV and SARS-CoV.
The COVID-19 situation is changing rapidly. Since this disease is caused by a new virus, people do not have immunity to it, and a vaccine may be many months away. Doctors and scientists are working on estimating the mortality rate of COVID-19, but at present, it is thought to be higher than that of most strains of the flu.
Several other differences are:
COVID-19 stays active on surfaces longer and might be spread through the airborne route, meaning that tiny droplets remaining in the air could cause disease in others even after the ill person is no longer near.
COVID-19 is new so no process was in place to either dx it or treat it. It had to be clinically cultured.
COVID-19 can seem like a cold but can spread much more quickly than flu to the lungs, heart and brain – where it can do more damage and kill faster. Both an under active and over active immune response can speed death.
It seems that kids can be carriers but rarely, at this point, are dx with COVID 19,
@Jerry –
That said, scientists have studied seasonal flu for decades. So, despite the danger of it, we know a lot about flu viruses and what to expect each season. In contrast, very little is known about the new coronavirus and the disease it causes, dubbed COVID-19, because it’s so new. This means COVID-19 is something of a wild card in terms of how far it will spread and how many deaths it will cause.
“Despite the morbidity and mortality with influenza, there’s a certainty … of seasonal flu,” Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, said in a White House press conference on Jan. 31. “I can tell you all, guaranteed, that as we get into March and April, the flu cases are going to go down. You could predict pretty accurately what the range of the mortality is and the hospitalizations [will be],” Fauci said. “The issue now with [COVID-19] is that there’s a lot of unknowns.”
SOURCE: https://www.livescience.com/new-coronavirus-compare-with-flu.html
Well said, Paul. Thank you.
@Jerry, there are many unknowns, but I am confident that this is going to be really bad. COVID-19 is fairly contagious and substantially more deadly than the flu, especially to the elderly. We have to take this seriously, starting now. Social distancing will save many thousands of lives.
@Jerry – be careful with the “just flu” or
“flu is worse” thinking. Wuhan and Milan did not get knocked over by “just flu”. Estimates are that rest of Europe and US are less than 2 weeks behind Milan. Most if us are only 1-2 degrees separated from an infected person at the moment. This was s going to pile on top of flu and other illnesses.
@Jerry — Epidemiologists are very cautious to make precise projections, but they give pieces of the puzzle. Generally its thought this disease may infect 50-70% of the world population in the coming year. If you assume say 0.6-0.9% of them dying (ignoring the much higher WHO 3.5% case fatality rate report), that 25-50 million people worldwide. The US is 5% of the world population so 1.2-2.5 million people in the US this year. The CDC projects that 20 to 50K will die of flu, so this could be 20-100x worse than flu.
https://www.cdc.gov/flu/about/burden/preliminary-in-season-estimates.htm
So far about 4000 people have died. I’d extrapolate that another 40,000 could die in the next 20 days as things grow exponentially. Until that trend doesn’t prove to be the case, err on the side of extreme caution. And things will grow exponentially without large-scale social distancing and other measures.
To me, the most important is to Slow DOWN the epidemic. If hospitals are saturated, patients will be in the parking lots. If it means wearing gloves at the supermarket and using paper to avoid touching the flushing handles in a public bathroom, so be it.
Exactly. By “flattening the curve”, we may have a similar number of cases but the peak number will be lower so our hospitals and providers will be less overwhelmed. This is crucial – in Italy, the hospitals in affected areas are currently out of beds for critically ill patients.
And Jerry – for young healthy people, this is more like “just the flu”, but for those who are older or have lung disease or other serious chronic illnesses it has a much higher fatality rate (not to mention how many people die from flu each year).