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JMJ
There's a few conspiracy theories circulating about the origin of the pandemic and this is simply people looking for a simple explanation for a complex event.
Sorry people, if you want to understand what is happening, you're going to have to trust the experts with appropriate qualification. For example a practicing American osteopathic physician such as Dr. Rashid Buttar just doesn't cut it. Qualifications to look for are PhD's in infectious diseases, genetics, immunology.
A now a few facts:
- The virus was circulating as early as October (note1).
- It is not a human derived virus (note 1, 2 and 3)
- A preliminary study out of Germany supports the infection fatality rate "the percentage of all the people infected who eventually die of the disease" to be ~0.4%. (note 4)
- Data suggests that 80% of infections are mild or asymptomatic, 15% are severe requiring oxygen and 5% are critical requiring ventilation (note 5). This ratio emerged months ago and has remained roughly the same up to now.
- The Spanish Influenza had multiple waves and there is nothing stopping COVID-19 from doing the same.
- The case fatality rate only gives you a subset of the picture. Once the pandemic subsides research will be performed to ascertain the infection fatality rate for each country / region.
Let's put this in perspective, worst case, if everyone in Canada got Covid-19, we would expect about 150,000 people to die.
However, not everyone gets it - otherwise 37,590 people would die every year from seasonal flu. The 2019/20 flu season had 42,475 confirmed cases of seasonal flu, with 500-1500 deaths per year (combined influenza / pneumonia).
The death rate for influenza in Canada is 500 to 1500 cases per year. The combined, influenza and pneumonia which is a common complication of influenza, kills more than 8,000 people a year. (note 9).As of today there have been 59,357 cases and 3,675 covid related deaths.
End point: Keep the infection rate down and then the health care system isn't overwhelmed.
So ... wash your hands and stop complaining.
P^3
Notes
1. https://www.dhs.gov/publication/st-master-question-list-covid-19
2. https://www.sciencealert.com/here-s-what-scientists-think-of-the-coronavirus-was-made-in-a-lab-rumour
3. https://www.sciencealert.com/the-new-coronavirus-could-have-been-percolating-innocently-in-humans-for-years
4. https://reason.com/2020/04/09/preliminary-german-study-shows-a-covid-19-infection-fatality-rate-of-about-0-4-percent/?amp
5. https://www.who.int/news-room/q-a-detail/q-a-similarities-and-differences-covid-19-and-influenza#:~:text=Mortality%20for%20COVID%2D19,quality%20of%20health%20care
6. https://www.canada.ca/en/public-health/services/publications/diseases-conditions/fluwatch/2019-2020/weeks-51-1-december-15-2019-january-4-2020.html
7. https://ipac-canada.org/influenza-resources.php#SEASONAL
8. https://www.canada.ca/en/public-health/services/publications/diseases-conditions/fluwatch/2018-2019/annual-report.html
9. https://ipac-canada.org/influenza-resources.php
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