HotardAg07 said:

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I do not find this particularly surprising or interesting. A few areas in our country have been hit hard, the rest haven't. It's widely known now that we avoided overloading our hospitals and that estimates for hospitalization were initially overestimated. If you did the same interview to a number of cities, you would get similar responses.

That should not invalidate the experience of doctors who do work in harder hit areas of New York City, Newark, New Orleans, or Detroit either. We have some Aggie doctors on this very board who have shared exactly why this virus is fearsome.

My point is not that one person's experience is more valid than the other, my point is that they're both valid and they tell the story of the virus.

I also find it so counter productive to complain about the news. We all know that the news is driven off of views and clicks and the general public viewing behavior drives the style and substance of the news they consume. Fox News isn't pushing these narratives you are saying the media is pushing, and it's largely because they're feeding the red meat that their constituency wants to see. The same reason CNN/NBC/CBS are pushing their narratives. It's well-known that people react much stronger to negative information than positive information, the Freakonomics podcast details the situation very well in their latest podcast about the challenges news organizations face in this regard.

Despite what has been said here, the age distribution of the virus has been widely known and widely distributed for literally months now. Two full months ago I posted on Facebook about the age-dependency and comorbidity dependency of CV. It wasn't some state secret being withheld from the public.


I know that it's not the intent of the messenger, but sometimes a lot of the responses to the age distribution dying has the tone of "so what, they are old and were going to die soon anyways." My grandma is in her early 80s and she has some preconditions that would make her at risk if she caught CV. I don't think that she has one foot in the grave quite yet, she still works, throws parties almost every weekend, does DIY home projects, gardening etc. If she died it would absolutely cut her life short and devastate me and my other family members robbing us of valuable time with a special person.

The fact that we went from 1 known death of CV in the US on March 1 to ~2,000 people dying every day for a fully sustained month now is a jarring and severe situation and shows the lethality and transmissability of the virus. We should start to open up and get our economy rev'd up, but we shouldn't do so in a way that disregards the very real threat of the virus and act like it's no risk to anybody under 70. This isn't a disease where you can bear all the risk of your decisions. This is a disease where your decisions risk yourself and every person you come into contact with. It should be treated that way.

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Your situation is exactly what the op is talking about. We take your grandmother and secure her so she won't get the virus, if she so chooses. Doesn't mean we need to stay distanced or not working. Unfortunately the largest element of the society are the ones being locked down. I feel that we really don'tr need to stay locked down, or to social distance ourselves but instead find ways to protect your grandmother that won't require that. No one wants her to pass at all. quite the opposite. Again, this was ever only about flattening the curve to not overwhelm the hospitals. This was never about ensuring particular people did not catch the virus. That has only been a recent narrative and most of us never "signed on" to that. Now that hospitals don't seem to be overrun thanks to the flattening efforts, they should be able to handle any spikes that come and we can get back to life.

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We have some Aggie doctors on this very board who have shared exactly why this virus is fearsome.

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What have the doctors on here said that contradicts what the doctor in the OP said? It is fearsome. But only to those that are elderly, the most vulnerable and the poor. For the 98-99% of the rest of us, those are not reasons to lock all of society down. It's just not possible to wait for a vaccine. We have to live our lives. I am for fully opening up. But let those most effected by this choose to stay out of harms way and put our resources towards giving them the protection they need. As long as we, the demographic least effected by this, can live as freely and openly as we did before this of course. To me, it's the only feasible and proper way to handle this situation and one that is very possible to do.

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sometimes a lot of the responses to the age distribution dying has the tone of "so what, they are old and were going to die soon anyways."

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I have not seen anyone one here say this personally. I've got 80+ year old parents and I do not want them to die. I also cannot support policies that have us all locked up, masked and gloved and limited either. Neither do they and they are pretty vocal about it. Many older folks seem to be pretty adamant about going on and NOT be afraid. A few seem to have their own "I've lived a good life, not stopping now b/c of this" attitude and are out and about with and many without masks. No one wants to see them die or even be hospitalized from this. But, again, sheltering the healthy is not the way to protect them.

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It's widely known now that we avoided overloading our hospitals and that estimates for hospitalization were initially overestimated.

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not to pick nits, but there's not been a lot of amplified discussion over the better than anticipated hospitalization rates

it's a massively buried lede

in fact, there hasn't been a re-message at all away from our stance in mid-March when that was the overriding concern

my opinion is that lack of plan given the shifting circumstances on the ground is part of what's making everyone crazy. public health messaging requires trust and we've been shredding that trust for three months now.