#pints rants

You know how many kids died from polio? About 3% on average. Adults faired worse, but even then about 70% of polio cases were asymptomatic. The remaining 30% ranged from mild to death, with mild taking up the lion's share.

At our peak year, the US had about 52,000 reported cases of polio (which means that the actual number of people who had it but were asymptomatic was almost about 200,000).

Out of those 50k+ symptom diagnoses cases, only 3k died. The other 47k recovered.

Yet even those numbers were sufficient to create the March of Dimes and a public pressure to find cures, vaccinations, etc.

Within 15 years, doctors started to notice that adult survivors were developing similar symptoms and these patients were the first to show what are now called "post-polio syndrome" patients.

But even before that, the 20-25% of cases with symptoms but who recovered often had mobility issues, bent legs or arms, 'frozen' joints, etc because of how poliomyelitis attacks nerves.

With Covid, if you say "well 99% of ppl survive" a) you're wrong, it's more like 93-95% and b) you're saying '99% are fine' ie survival means complete recovery.

Nope.

It's like saying that 99% of people survive amputation of multiple fingers.

Well sure, they survive, if it's a binary alive/dead count.

They didn't die from it, so they survived.

But how does having 6 fingers change your life from having 10? How does losing a thumb change your ability to do things in every day life? How much extra wear or stress will your remaining fingers, hand, etc take on due to you having to switch to a non-dominant hand as primary use or accelerate repetitive motion conditions like carpal tunnel?

How long would it take you to adapt to having fewer fingers, adapt to a prostethic, gain confidence in the reuse of your hand(s)? How much more would you have to pay every year for medical stuff and how much on non-covered items that you'd have to replace or just start buying for convenience?

Scissors? Can openers? Button hooks?

What if your job was typing, like a court stenographer? Or a music teacher? Would you be able to adapt?

Alive doesn't mean unchanged or unharmed.

Surviving doesn't mean returning to the status quo.

People aren't just dying from Covid or surviving it, everyone. A large portion of people who have recovered from covid have serious damage to their heart, lungs, brain and other organs that may never fully heal, complications that change their lives forever—just like lots of people who survived Smallpox or polio or rubella were never back to the way they were prior to catching those diseases. Going through it doesn't end with you being 100% fine if you survive.

It's more like :

Out of 100, 95 ppl survive initial infection

- of those 95, X (let's say 35) end up with a long-term issue

- of those 35, 25 have more than one longterm issue (lasting over 6 months, requiring medical checks or adaptation of work/life) that may be treatable or improve over time without much intervention

- the remaining 10 have conditions that are chronic and less likely to improve over time and in turn could make the patient more likely to die from other illness, decrease their overall quality of life and decrease their lifespan overall.

So suddenly it isn't a 5/95 issue, it's a 35/95 issue and a 10/35 issue, so your odds of surviving haven't changed but your odds of surviving unharmed and exactly as you were before are greatly decreased.

Now it's more of a 1/3, where you swap from 5% dying to 30~% having long-lasting illness, symptoms or developing conditions that continue for anywhere from 6mo post-infection to end of life 20, 30 or 40 years from now.

If I cut off, say, your right thumb and left forefinger, you're 99% likely to live afterward, but you're certainly going to have a ton of fucking issues with doorknobs, buttons, typing, getting dressed, etc which will require months or years of you adapting along with costing you a shit ton of money in costs for medical, assitive devices, potential career change and all the time involved in learning how to use your hands/body. But hey you're part of the 99% who survived so why are you mad?

So to review -

5 die.

35 survive with potential life-long issues.

60 survive with little to no symptoms or complications (but also no long-term immunity so could be reinfected and/or still subject to secondary development of issues related to their exposure in the future)

Sounds more like a 40/60 split than a 5/95 now, right?

That's because IT ALWAYS IS

3k deaths out of 50k from polio doesn't give you the # who were permanently paralyzed in a limb, two limbs, left unable to walk, etc. or that up to 50% of polio survivors developed a condition from their original exposure decades later (and that no one even knew existed at the peak of polio infections in the US) even if they survived without permanent paralysis of any part of their body.

We're on track to see 400k+ deaths by the end of the year in the US alone and that doesn't include the people with chronic or permanent issues who survived.

It isn't binary.

It isn't something to dismiss because of the percentage of fatality is 'low'.

It also isn't only your life that is being endangered.

Don't travel for the holidays.

Don't gather with people outside your household.

Don't go all over shopping for gifts.

Don't hold your tongue around people you care about: tell them to stay home, tell them to not gather, tell them to be patient and think of others.

It isn't just covid. It's all the cancer patients having to delay treatments that compromise their immune systems. It's all the patients needing organ transplants who cannot get surgeries. It's the backups of CT/MRI for emergency patients bc of protocol to avoid contagion. It's about all the people who need care only hospitals can provide being rescheduled or shuffled down the weeks. It's about full hospitals, people forced to find ways to get basic needs met in areas that don't have many options for at-risk people, and a domino effect of selfish behavior directly leading to the injury and death of thousands who could be alive today if people just did the bare fucking minimum and masked up, distanced and stayed home.