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COVID-19 The Facts Please

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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:
  1. The virus was circulating as early as October (note1).
  2. It is not a human derived virus (note 1, 2 and 3)
  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)
  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.
  5. The Spanish Influenza had multiple waves and there is nothing stopping COVID-19 from doing the same.
  6. 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.
So, the danger isn't so much from the virus itself but from an overwhelming of the healthcare systems. This is a key factor in keeping down the fatality rate.

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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