Doc Holliday said:
Number of children in the USA who have died from novel-coronavirus: 86
Number of children in the USA who die every year from the seasonal flu: ~500
Doc, has it ever really been truly about the deaths from when this started?
IMO, it has been about the unknown. We have known so little about the virus. All that could be seen were cases piling up in emergency rooms at an alarming rate in such a short time without being able to do much about it. As those souls lingered in ERs the sick just kept coming creating some dire situations in ERs....and unfortunately morgues not even being able to handle the flow at the peak times in some areas.
We now know more about it, but still it is not enough to know for sure how it can be truly effectively treated, why some people are affected severely while others barely know they have it, if they even know that. It has taken a while to figure out how it is spread, and even that causes debates.
People keep trying to compare it to diseases we have seen in the past....ones with which we have some knowledge (seasonal flu, for example) and have some understanding of how to try to prevent those, treat those, and what the expected outcomes would be. Comparisons enough to anywhere accurately predict a reasonable forecast of outcomes when one of the sides being compared has little if any known facts about it is futile. And to some extent we still don't know what will happen with Covid, as it appears to be coming back in areas in which it was thought it had been beaten down.
The most concerning thing about these unknowns is not so much the risk of death from it, but what affect it has on you long-term even if you "recover". That I believe is the biggest unknown that prevents people from just taking the approach of "damn the torpedoes" and move back to trying to move back to a "normal" mode of living. It is one thing to say that the death rates are low and as such just flip it off, so to speak. It is another if we find out down the road that the percentage of the general population that has chronic life changing impairments if they have any bout with the virus regardless of how outwardly minor symptoms eventually ends up dramatically higher (to an unacceptable level) is the concern for which we have no answer. And probably won't know that answer (if the answer is grim) until it is too late because we can't go back and prevent one's getting the disease after they have already been exposed. If we can answer that question of the long-term effects, then we can either take specific actions, mitigate, or essentially ignore the risk from the virus and move on. That I think, is the reason for caution and why even with low deaths, etc. health officials are very reluctant to signal any end to draconian precautions and a return to full "normalcy" until they have a better handle on the long-lasting effects, and those long-lasting effects is where young people should have concern.
