My daughter contacted me today because she is concerned about the uptick in COVID cases and what that means for her age group.
I sent her this video. It’s an excellent summary of what’s going on and helps to mitigate the unnecessary fears we may have, concerning someone we love in this age group, with regard to COVID.
Fun fact from the video: A person 25 years old is 50 times less likely to die from COVID than from drowning.
Mrs. Monomakhos
Right on Gail. Since I’m moving to Alaska I wanted to check out the death rate of those infected, it’s a little over 0.1%. This seems to be the case in many places, as the infections increase, the death rate drops
On a completely separate note, here is a video of angry parishioners in Toronto when they are told they have to use multiple spoons:
https://www.instagram.com/p/CCkRq_ApEmu/?igshid=1q05aprc41d4l
Good for those parishioners! The Orthodox people are beginning to wake up and smell the coffee!
Petros:
lucky you ? if you’ll be near Orthodox church St. Herman of Alaska?
Heard incredible stories of certain charismatic monks out there, among Monastic Christian Brotherhood … don’t forget Monk Seraphim Rose?
The only statistic that counts is 135,000+.
That’s not entirely true. Context is everything.
six million out of a world population of 2.3 billion ca. 1939-1945 was only 0.26% of the world’s population…0.043% per year.
yet how many more lives and how much property was lost to fight that war?
Exactly.
I agree, context is everything. I think an important missing piece of context is the tendency to treat covid is an all-or-nothing deal. You get it, you get better, or you die.
Except that isn’t the reality. Even for younger adults, multi-month difficult convalescences are not uncommon. We are only beginning to grapple with the lifelong consequences of covid for some who contract it: lung damage, heart damage, brain damage.
A risk assessment for the young has a lower chance of death, but still has to account for potentially being very sick for an extended period of time, as well as possible permanent disability.
When you use terms like “uncommon” or “lifelong consequences”, you have to qualify and quantify what you mean. How many people are suffering from what and what were/are the complications and comorbidities that might have contributed to their circumstances? Is the number high enough to be statistically significant?
I know you’re just reciting what others have said but when you think about something like “lifelong consequences” for example, how could one know something is “lifelong” just months into a pandemic? And what does “potentially sick” mean? We all could get “potentially sick” from any number of things; it doesn’t mean that we did or that the reason we all got sick is the same. For example, a COVID patient could have acquired a bacterial infection from a ventilator, which anyone with any other diagnosis could have contracted using the same ventilator. That is not a COVID consequence. It is a “ventilator” consequence, as they are known to carry bacteria.
Loaded statements have no meaning unless they are backed up by numbers.
Plus, you can’t just take these things at face value without verifying what they mean. For example, if one child under 11 dies of the disease, would it be fair to say “it targets the young?” Probably not and can one know who is really impacted by COVID or why, if COVID is being conflating with other things? No, not really.
Far more children are being harmed by the now drastically increased rates of child molestation, child abuse, & developmental neglect due to stunted child social development secondary to isolation, etc. — all caused by “lockdown” and the (often irrational) fears fueled by social media’s constant “panic noise” — than will ever be harmed by coronavirus. That’s reason #1 that schools need to reopen. Teachers and schools are the #1 reporters of child abuse.
Plus, even the American Academy of Pediatrics has acknowledged that “distance learning” is terrible for children under 12 years old. It just doesn’t work for them.
Parent economic fears + social fears + fears inflamed by an irresponsible media looking for clickbait/ratings/ad revenue = huge increases in child abuse and child molestation. Many (most?) parents are not emotionally centered themselves and don’t know how to reach out for help when they need it.
I know it’s taboo to mention, but child abuse/neglect/molestation even happens in Orthodox Christian families. There, I said it. No way that Orthodox are magically immune from this.
Coronavirus/COVID is here to stay for the foreseeable future. Humanity will need to figure out how to live with it, like we did with polio, measles, seasonal influenza, HIV, etc. The vaccine “cure” is a white elephant that ain’t happening anytime soon, if ever. The common cold is also a coronavirus, and a vaccine for that has never been developed. HIV has been around for more than 30 years with no vaccine on the horizon. The best near future bet is improved treatment options for those who are seriously ill from COVID.
Our churches need to figure out how to deal with coronavirus. Not sure how much headway we’ve made there. Cancelling or doing virtual/online Pascha 2020 needs to remain a tragic event that should never be repeated.
Are family dinner with grandma and grandpa now a thing of the past? Weddings? Graduation or retirement parties? Baptism celebrations? These are all facets of life with coronavirus that we must tackle head-on, not issues that we should pretend are not there.
All very discouraging. Surely God will help us turn this around. If people weren’t so afraid of the virus, they would let us empty nesters help them out with the kids. We would do it in a heartbeat and it would be pure joy for us but there is just so much fear.
We know more about covid now than we did in February. And we will know more in December than we do now. Unfortunately what we are in the process of learning is that covid can do a lot of various things to the human body, none of them good. Studies like this are flashing red lights:
https://www.newsweek.com/scans-reveal-heart-damage-over-half-covid-19-patients-study-1517293
Given the growth of infections in the United States there is little doubt that there will be ample data to determine the incident statistics of medium and long-term consequences of covid. This will take time. But the warnings are there. One issue is that “statistically significant” can be a matter of perspective based on scale. Half a percent for complication X is small, unless you have a hundred million cases in which case you are talking about half a million people.
Alitheia, if that’s true, then we’d ban all automobiles, cigarettes, alcohol products, and the list goes on. The United States is the third largest country on the planet (I believe), right after China and India, each of whom have over a billion people.
I don’t mean to sound like a broken record, but context is everything. As Gail and I reported this morning, our present morality rate is exactly the same as the rest of the world’s. The reason the 135,000 (138,0000) number looks astronomical is because it is a big number –I grant you that–but it’s only 0.0041 % of our total population.
“The only statistic that counts is 135,000 ”
I don’t agree but rather view this type of statement as a fear projection tactic — often a subconscious effort, but it’s an attempt to get others to fear as much as some are. Recently I was talking with a friend and commented that I am working and training myself to live life not afraid of coronavirus. “Well, you should be afraid!” was the retort. No, that’s not true.
Christ tells us repeatedly in the Gospels to “have no fear” or “fear not.” What recent generations have failed to teach our youth is that learning to live by courage with faith — all in the face of fear — is a learned skill. It’s not magic that some have and others don’t. There are also ways to feed fear (like living on social media 5 hours per day) and ways to starve fear (like deleting social media accounts, limiting internet use, etc.). Behaviors and how we choose to spend our time matters.
Not letting fear guide one’s live is a *choice* for those who want it. It is also a learned skill that must be *practiced.*
As for the data, the latest data from RealClearPolitics’ coronavirus data tables (https://www.realclearpolitics.com/coronavirus) shows quite small numbers from many of the world’s most populous countries (China, India, Indonesia, etc.).
If we are letting the published numbers guide our fear levels, then we may as well let the prevailing winds guide our fear levels too. The published numbers are so incomplete it’s not even funny. 3.5m confirmed cases in the United States — when in reality the more likely total number of exposures in the United States is (by now) more than 30-40 million. This virus spreads like wildfire, while a tiny fraction are made irreversibly ill or die from it. Those at risk should be careful where and how they interact with others. “Quarantining” the entire country doesn’t make sense and is not realistic. All of our mental and emotional health matters — keeping all of us shuttered up and without work or school for fear that we will get irreversibly sick if we walk by someone who is carrying coronavirus is delusional.
I like that term: “a fear projection”
Right on, Gail.
The number of excess deaths due to COVID is put at less than half the number cited by Aletheia.
Over 92% of the victims have had comorbidities–many three or more–putting them at risk before the Wuhan virus arrived.
I can’t find the percentage now, but a very high percentage of those who succumbed (in Italy I think) were not expected to survive 2020 even without the infection.
We talk about saving every life no matter the cost, as if any of us having escaped an immediate threat to life, will then live in this world happily ever after. But of course, this life is fleeting no matter what efforts once expends and it is eternal life that should be our focus.
Christ is in our midst,
lxc
I found the percentages. Take a look at our new post.
That’s true. Most that die young have diabetes or other health problems.
This is interesting:
https://www.jpost.com/health-science/hebrew-u-scientist-drug-could-eradicate-covid-19-from-lungs-in-days-635028