Snowbird Concerns Winter 2020-21 | Page 2 | Your stories | Discussion forum

AltaRed, we'll have to stay in disagreement. "Many" people are in car crashes but we all (properly) respond by driving around like fools all the time, we are immune!

Google says "For COVID-19, data to date suggest that 80% of infections are mild or asymptomatic, 15% are severe infection, requiring oxygen and 5% are critical infections, requiring ventilation." The latter two are where the old folks and those with a short list of certain underlying conditions come in, otherwise you're good to go (except for where lightning sometimes strikes, and you can be sure the media gets there).

I've been focused on stats such as death rates by age in various countries (don't care about infection rates - billions get the cold all the time and we don't care - only deaths matter) and, since day one, the numbers have been nothing but reassuring to me. And pretty much at odds with media and public officials' stances, though I do get that it's a new thing so overreaction until we get some info is prudent.

One example: Even in USA, as of today about 191 in every 192 Americans age 85+ (the oldest of the old, very few months or years left) have not yet been hospitalized for this virus, and of the 1 most still survive. Even in age 50 - 64 about 713 in every 714 have not yet been hospitalized for this, and that 1's survival rate is even better. And so on, drops precipitously by age group, pretty much to zero where there's none of the few specified underlying conditions present. I could go on forever with stats like this but I find people prefer media narrative, certain studies brought to their attention by media, anecdotes, etc, so cool.

Well said, Alta Red and Loonie.

Enough written material to validate that post-covid organ damage is real. Just a few links to non-mass media articles follows.....

https://www.healthline.com/health-news/heres-what-happens-to-the-body-after-contracting-the-coronavirus#Other-organs-affected-by-COVID-19

https://www.advisory.com/daily-briefing/2020/04/17/organ-damage

https://www.hopkinsmedicine.org/health/conditions-and-diseases/coronavirus/coronavirus-kidney-damage-caused-by-covid19

https://aakp.org/doctors-flummoxed-by-long-term-organ-damage-in-covid-19-survivors/

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7187881/

Granted it seems organ damage is more likely with severe cases of covid-19 illness requiring hospitalization or even intubation and not enough is yet known to develop good statistics. This is more than anecdotes but obviously more study results will come forward over the coming months.

Briguy, that quote is attributed to American writer Mark Twain. Very true, stats can be misused.

Post 25's last 2 sentences are where we're at re other organ damage, etc, i.e. the small % that are severe cases have some that can cause other damage but not enough stats yet. But even the majority of the 5% severe cases are cleaned up within 6 weeks, good as new.

One of my sons recently worked on a mine site with among others an 85 year-old drill operator from Quebec, smoker, he got it , in hospital, survived, he's as good as ever. Cool story but like the Anglican priest story meaningless info, really. We hear about the 1 person killed by the storm, not the other million who survived.

I see that Bill is opposed to the use of anecdote to get a point across (although he uses them), but I am hoping readers will indulge me.

On 28 Sept 1928, a researcher who had returned from his vacation went back to work in his lab. He discovered that, during his absence, a staph culture that he'd left out had mold all over it and the staph bacteria were dying off. This was odd and made for a good story to share with his colleagues at lunch. Just a curious one-off observation, an anecdote.

But the researcher wasn't content to leave it at that. He wondered if the story might have wider implications, because it did not fit with what he had expected to find.

His name was Sandford Fleming, and he had just discovered penicillin, which would save millions and millions of lives and continues to do so today.

Should he perhaps have just left it as a curious little anecdote and forgotten about it? He had no stats, only an alert and curious mind.

This is just one little anecdote, but there are many many just like it, especially in the world of science and medicine. .

When something happens that is not expected, it is a gift to the researcher - if they are wise enough to notice - because it opens up new avenues for research. Eventually there will be stats to support a valid discovery, but initially they are often just anecdotes - like, for instance when someone has unexpected sequelae from a viral infection.

In China, where this virus started, a brave physician claimed on the basis of what he'd observed, that there was a new lethal virus afoot. He was denounced by the state because they didn't want to hear about his observations and preferred to shut down his story, which did not fit the party line. As the resulting pandemic took more and more lives, he too succumbed, and eventually the gov't had to recant. If they had been willing to listen to his story, this whole tragedy might have been avoided or quickly contained.

Back in the 1960s and 70s I read a lot of medical journals. I'm not sure what's in them now but, at the time, I was, frankly, surprised at how many anecdotal articles were in them, with stories about one patient with one odd set of symptoms or one unusual treatment that worked in one case, etc. I had expected they would all be scientific ones, with large samples, intellectual rigor, and replicable results with supporting statistics.
At the time I didn't understand the significance of anecdotes.

Not all anecdotes will be useful, but, then, not all stats or scientific experiments are useful either.

I like Loonie's anecdote about the possible importance of anecdotal cases in science but the discoverer of penicillin is Alexander Fleming (1881-1955) not Sandford Fleming (1827-1915, proposer of time zones). It appears the two are not related.

A lot of young people feel like Bill- COVID being no big deal to them. In Alabama they are now having COVID parties where they pay to get in, and invite people to the party with known COVID, and the first person to have contracted COVID after the party gets the proceeds of the ticket sales. I don't get a good feeling about the next generation reading this LOL . I guess this is part of the reason USA has had over 130K deaths so far.

https://www.ctvnews.ca/health/coronavirus/people-in-alabama-are-throwing-covid-19-parties-with-a-payout-when-one-gets-infected-official-1.5007903

Of the USA 130K deaths so far there are 941 (less than 1K) total in the up to and including age 34 (stats to w/e June 27). Of the 941, only 171 are in up to (school age) 24 year olds, almost zero statistically given the population, especially when it's reasonable to assume many of these had some of the listed underlying factors such as diabetes or obesity. As a grandparent with young grandkids, extremely comforting to me.

Bill said
Of the USA 130K deaths so far there are 941 (less than 1K) total in the up to and including age 34 (stats to w/e June 27). Of the 941, only 171 are in up to (school age) 24 year olds, almost zero statistically given the population, especially when it's reasonable to assume many of these had some of the listed underlying factors such as diabetes or obesity. As a grandparent with young grandkids, extremely comforting to me.  

I've heard there's been quite an increase this year at Toronto's Sick Childrens Hospital of children having Kawasaki like syndrome triggered by COVID 19. I wouldn't be happy if any friends' of mine had their kids contract this as it can cause cardiac issues.

https://medicalxpress.com/news/2020-06-kawasaki-like-syndrome-linked-covid-children.html