The example with TB is just to show a comparison of one of the most (if not the most) infectious diseases that the human race is dealing with and yet we have barley responded with a 1/5 of the effort we have with COVID. The numbers for TB will astound you.
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·Current infections: 1.8 Billion
·New Infections Every Year: 10 Million
·Deaths every year: 1.5 Million
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If this is not an epidemic I don’t know what is regardless whether it is a virus or bacteria. Furthermore as you note, we have had more success fighting bacteria but the issue we are facing is that 25% of cases are drug resistant TB, which means we don’t have the drugs to fight it, new types of antibiotics are getting harder and harder to come by and are still not yet available. Note 5 to 10% of TB sufferers will develop active TB and need drugs to survive. To put this in context the deaths (conservatively) we are going to see will be as follows:
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1.8 Billion (Current TB cases) x 25% (Drug Resistant TB) x 5% (TB sufferers who develop active TB) = 22,500,000 people will die from TB (That is a minimum) even with medication.
1.8B x %5 = 90,000,000 = 90m - 22.5m = 67.5m will survive with the current drugs that are available
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Basically, it will wipe out the Australian population. So while there is treatment for TB it shows that it is not sufficient to cure the disease and millions are going to die before we stop this.
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Now let discuss COVID, firstly to respond to the comment of “Almost 70%+o do recover successfully on avg, remainder fall in a range of long termrecovery to death”
This statement factually incorrect. What we know to date is:
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·31.3 million have contracted COVID
·966,000 have died
·61,000 are critical condition
·7.3m are mild
·Based on the current figures that puts the chance of death or long term recovery at:
o31.3m / (966k +61.3k) = 3.2%
o96.8% make a full recovery
oThis takes into account the entire age spectrum
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Now if you take 50 years old’s and younger the chances of dying if you contract COVID is 0.4%. This is in line with the common flu. See table below
https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/coronavirus-age-sex-demographics/-
The reason why I believe Sweden has done the right thing (It was a risk knowing that death rates could have been 1% at the time they made the decision and I am not condoning that) is that now their population while heavy infected with COVID, deaths have virtually stopped. Hospital rooms are becoming empty and they have had no lock down. The possible reasons were discussed in detail through the youtube video posted earlier and if correct this would mean the Swedish population will virtually be able to live in a society where COVID has virtually no effect on the general population and they will be moving closer to herd immunity while the rest of us are waiting for a vaccine which as you mentioned are very hard to come by.While this theory is being laughed at by many people the numbers speak for the themselves.
Further to this, Australian researchers have been testing a new COVID blood test which has shown that there was 7 times more people infected with COVID in Australia than what the current tests provided results for.
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See the link here:https://www.anu.edu.au/news/all-news/new-blood-test-finds-undetected-covid-19-cases-
This would suggest that Sweden actually had 7 times more cases than they reported, which would mean the virus has spread through the population and is slowly dying off like Swine Flu did in 2008/2009.
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Now that we have a much better understanding of COVID and we know it will not kill 1% of the population plus we have good data on countries such as Singapore / Malaysia / Vietnam / Japan / India / Russia how they treated COVID sufferers maybe it is time we rethink our action plan to fight this disease which really only affects people 50 years old and above.
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Numbers of the countries mentioned:
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-Singapore 57,607 cases, 27 deaths 0.046% death rate
-India 5,5m cases, 88k deaths 1.6% death rate (While the rate is high, we are talking about a 3rd world country with limited access to medical facilities yet they have produced an amazing result (Also TB kills 300k plus in this country every year, so COVID is not really a problem for them atm) – Virtually zero lock down, I was working there when COVID hit
-Russia 1,1m cases, deaths 19.4k 1.72% death rate, another outstanding result, virtually zero lockdown
-Australia 26,912 cases, deaths 851, 3.16% - Severe lockdown, yet death rate still double
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I still find it strange I can get better treatment for COVID in the countries mentioned above (except Australia), while Australia has banned certain medicine that has shown to improve chances of surviving covid by 53% with pre exposure treatment or post exposure treatment, rather than waiting until someone is on there death bed to start using drugs not approved for a specific virus even though they are approved and safe to use for other viruses.
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The lock downs are ruining peoples live and all we are doing is keeping ourselves venerable until a vaccine that might work becomes available. As soon as there is an outbreak in a society that has isolated people with lock downs, the virus spreads like wildfire because no one has immunity, this circle of lock down, open up, lock down, open up will just continue to re-occur.
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The lockdowns were just meant to flatten the curve until we got better at dealing with the disease and to make sure the hospitals can cope. Well they can and have been and now trying to achieve zero transmission is unrealistic and will not occur. We need to put measures in place to protect the high risk people, be more proactive on how we treat people in terms of PEP and PrPEP, allow the younger generation to get back to work and realize that people under 50 years old that are healthy have just as much of a chance dying from the flu than COVID and more of a chance dying driving home from work.
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Life has risks but we cant hide forever waiting for a miracle to come past and save us. We should change out methods and fight back like Sweden has, this is the way we fight and beat COVID, instead of having lockdowns and waiting for the next cluster to occur.
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I am about to head back to India again for work, where most of my colleagues have already had COVID. (none have passed thankfully) There is risk and I will do everything I can to stay safe, including taking significant supplies of medication and vitamins to give myself the best chance of survival (Also taking a significant amount of Z-71) but I will not lock myself in a room/hotel/house any longer hiding from a disease that has just got as much chance of killing me as the everyday flu.When I return home, I will quarantine perform a COVID test and ensure any elderly I interact with will be safe.
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I am more worried about dying on the road in India, getting TB or Swine flu (new outbreak just recently in India) than dying of COVID.
Not sure if you remember or where you were but when Swine flu hit in 08 / 09 in Asia that also killed somewhere between 600k to 1.4m people. Yet we could fly anywhere, do anything. It was up to us to protect ourselves, which we did including our families.
However thanks for your response, it at least gave me a difference perspective and made me think for a while.
