andrewk65. I know this isn't discussed much in the mainstream but make no mistake, the key issue with this virus is not the death rate, it's the hospitalization rate. It causes a huge amount of people to be very sick and require hospital care, something that other contagious viruses like the flu or common cold don't do. The very sick and old will die just as they always do when diseases spread, but the real story is how many mostly-healthy people this thing sends to the hospitals. Not since the spanish flu has there been anything like this.
We've gotten a lot better at saving lives, and also at testing people, thus the cases/death rate is looking far better. The media and politicians will cherry pick that information to fit whatever narrative they want, they always do. But focusing just on deaths is only a small part of the overall story. The hospitals can only deal with so many patients, and as the virus continues to spread they're once again becoming strained as the sick people are pouring in. The lockdowns, social distancing, masks and all that was to slow the virus down enough so the hospitals could cope with all the sick people, not to directly save lives. Listen to the hospital doctors. They're saying "if these patients keep coming in at this rate we will no longer be able to help them all". You can find videos from italy or iran from the beginning of the pandemic when their hospitals became overloaded. Watching the bodies pile up in the corridors makes for very sobering viewing.
We may be better at treating and detecting the virus than we were 6 months ago but the underlying pandemic is spreading more out of control than ever. It looks like we're at the beginning of a third surge, it's too early to tell whether deaths will rise along with it or not. I don't care what the politicians or media commentators are saying, it's the hospitals that I'm listening to. They are the ones on the front lines. It looks like they're once again starting to struggle in some regions. Hopefully they can hold the line once again.
We just don't have a way to treat these viral infections, we can only give the patient care and keep them alive until their immune system can finally deal with it. That's where Recce comes in, if we can give them a nice dose of a broad spectrum anti-viral and deal with it much faster, we won't need these long hospital stays while people recover from it. An effective treatment is far more useful than a vaccine. Big pharma are focusing on vaccines because that's the only tool we have that we know works. Recce still has a long way to go until it proves itself. The underlying science doesn't care about how much we "need" a treatment, or big pharma or politics or any of that nonsense. We just need to keep grinding through the testing process until we have an answer. That's just how it is for every drug.
As a side note, more articles are appearing about the ongoing chronic issues caused by the virus. Once the pandemic is finally resolved and the noise dies down, I fear only then will we learn about the long term impact. This may become the new "asbestos", and we'll be hearing about the health problems for decades.
Expand
(20min delay)