Oh yea she's a hottie. Those sharp features are so feminine and intelligent. She can feed me string hoppers all day (she's of Sri Lankan descent)!
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Actually at present it is 10 times worse than covid - 50 million dead with the Spanish flu versus closing in on 5 mil with covid.
The Spanish flu was a shocker. Young people in their twenties getting symptoms in the morning and dead that night.
covid is the only real comparison with the spanish flu pandemic. There have been a couple of other "pandemics" since then but much more limited no mass dislocation, no mass burials, no mass lockdowns etc.
Even so, covid is now approaching the toll of The Holocaust.
The deaths from Spanish Flu could have been 100 million plus.
We just don’t know.
At the time countries in Asia and other parts of the world were very backward and no proper statistics were taken.
And also note that the population of the world was only around 2 billion then, so only a quarter of what it is now.
So if you you look at how many people the Spanish Flu killed as a proportion of the worlds population it was so much greater than covid.
The Spanish Flu killed 100 million out of a total population of 2 billion so around 5% of the total population. That’s 1 in 20 people.
Covid has killed 4.5 million people out of a total world population of 8 billion which is .06% of the worlds population. Thats 6 in every 10,000 people.
So covid is not even close to the Spanish Flu.
4.5 million lives is obviously a great tragedy. I am just making the point that it no where near the devastation of the Spanish Flu.
And my point is that even after such a great devastation people bounced back very quickly as soon as it was over.
Human beings are very resilient.
Just remember that during the Spanish Flu era they didnt have the technology to deal with it like we have today with the Covid.
But you're leaving out a very important factor. The entire medical practice back then was a lot more primitive than what it is now, right down to basic instrumentation. They did not have the means to easily measure basic stats like blood oxygen saturation level back then, for example. The pulse oximetry device, the thing they clip on your finger for this measurement, was only invented in 1935.
On top of that, there's also the "once bitten twice shy" factor. The Spanish Flu when it happened was the first time humankind had ever experienced anything like that. This time around with COVID, we have that to reference, to learn from it and act accordingly. They literally had nothing to go by back then.... Didn't even know what hit them.
If you take into account all the medical advances made from then til now while comparing the mortality rate of COVID vs the Spanish Flu, then there is an argument to be made that perhaps COVID is closer to the Spanish Flu in terms of mortality than a lot of people think.
Have a read of this study done on 3 countries, Spain, Sweden, and Switzerland and it looks pretty bad for COVID19. I think this may have preceded the Delta onslaught.
https://www.news-medical.net/news/20...ince-1918.aspx
“Following the evidence on excess mortality, the 2020 pandemic led to the second largest demographic disaster in over 100 years in the three countries we studied. <<snip>>
We have the experience of sar and ebola. Some of the vaccine we have like AZ was from sar experiments. We have a head start, able to have a vaccine within 9 months.
If it's of any consolation, i'm in touch with three regulars and all have had their first shot. Their friends are doing the same. They're worried about Covid and conscious also of no vac, no work.
I think we'll go the Italian Green Pass route, which is essentially freedom to work and play for the vaxxed and those with medical reasons for non vax, and no dice for the un-vaxxed.
Humans are exceptionally adaptible; we'll work our way through this and, likely, hit new economic and partying highs once through the worst.
This is a good snapshot of what's happening in Italy.
https://theconversation.com/italy-on...n-virus-165457
Maybe a glimpse into our possible future...
Was just watching the cricket between India and England on Telly and life in England seems pretty much back to normal. Full crowd at the ground, no masks wearing and drinking beers all around.
Are they just getting on with it and starting to just live with COVID plus be highly vaccinated?
Who knows, maybe our coming Summer can came back to?
NSW, perhaps even Australia if the state premiers fall in line, is definitely trying to copy what the UK is doing. That is, get past a certain milestone in vaccination levels, then let it rip, no holds barred "freedom".
I personally think it's a farce or even a scam. Here we have Gladys trying to sell the idea of more Vax = more freedom, with her point being that hospitalization rates are not increasing at the same rate as case numbers. Well, is it really because vaccination has prevented further hospitalisations, or is it because in the last few days hospitals have started refusing to accept COVID positive cases?
Both Blacktown and Westmead hospitals have implemented "emergency response", which strangely means they stop taking in more COVID patients. This started in the last few days.
In my opinion using hospitalization rates to measure anything is a big mistake because a lot of other factors can affect that figure. In places like India, Indonesia, Malaysia, the hospitals are so full that COVID patients are having to lie down on the pavements and benches outside the hospitals. Those wouldn't be counted as "hospitalized".
Its a massive public relations exercise, which is what you would expect from Scott Morrison PM (Positive Marketing).
Its all to cover up the fact that Morrison and Gladys failed and have blood on their hands, people sick and dying, as well as countless business bankruptcies and people out of work on their hands.
If Morrison did his job properly on quarantine, these cases would not have have leaked out.
Even if they did leak out if Morrison did his job properly on vaccination we should have been at 70% vaccination rates by June and over 80% by now, and the outbreak would be no where near as bad as it is now.
If Gladys did her job properly and put all of Sydney into a quick lockdown as soon as the outbreak started, instead of fucking around for 6 weeks, it would have peaked at less than 100 cases and been all over in 3 weeks and we would be back to normal.
But they failed, and here we are with 1,000 cases per day and rising (many experts say it will reach 1,500 or 2000 daily), young people sick in hospitals, and still only 30% of the population fully vaccinated, and people still sitting at home on the couch, businesses shut and going bankrupt.
And what is their solution? Marketing! To empahsise the good news and try and ignore the bad news.
Shame on Morrison and Gladys!
Lockdowns only work if the daily "mystery" case load is less than 20 or so. Once it reaches 30 it becomes a tipping point and unlikely to be pulled back, particularly with the Delta variant. I mentioned this a few months back and the fact that the Doherty modelling is predicated on a base case load of 30 seems to confirm this. Throwing more resources at it might have a marginal effect but that's all it will be. Victoria is unlikely to come back so that "short, sharp, hard" lockdown is unlikely to work now. NZ is on the way to this realisation and if it works then it'll be by luck, nothing else.
Qld has announced the construction of a 1000 bed quarantine facility, good luck with that, they're gonna need it. Palaszczuk seems overjoyed but this pathetic display of optimism is naive, the full meaning of this will steadily dawn on them. It also will a failure as this implies continual testing and isolation. Who's it for? Returning citizens? Tourists? Unvaccinated people? Eventual hospital overflow? The ideal result is that there will be nobody in it, good luck with that.
Welcome to the future boys, pre covid normality will soon be a distant memory, to be replaced by a cycle of surveillance, testing, isolation and being eternally grateful to walk around without a mask on.
All states will follow it up to a point but there are those that seemingly believe they can do better, they're delusional.
It's only a model and is likely not to work but only time will tell. The first three months might be ok (up until the election) then it will go downhill, how quick will be another matter. This drip feeding of freedom giving is but a test of public acceptance and compliance (already a challenge) but will also fail in the medium to long term.
I don't think I predicted "thousands and thousands of deaths", implied it or meant anything like your characterisation of what I said. I understand your comment is intended to be satirical and could be worth a chuckle or two but a valid understanding is there to be had if you look.
The vaccines are designed to prevent deaths, and they probably will. What they won't prevent is a high case load but it seems that this metric is the one that future health policy is destined to be designed around. This may turn out to be the wrong way to go about it. GB has already said the hospitalisations will be the important metric, so I'm not entirely out of line here.
80% full vaccination is, at the moment, a high bar. Chile is the only country with a comparable population number that has reached 70% so far. All the others over 70% have way, way smaller populations, some are half the size of Sydney, a lot easier to achieve and manage. I suspect that we won't get to 80% for another 12 months, if ever. Living in the 70% zone might be comfortable enough for most people not to bother anymore, such is the frailty of human acceptance.
I would dearly like to be wrong but reading the signposts from around the world leads me to think otherwise. We shall see.