From what I have seen, Feb-Apr was just a bad, bad time to get hit by Covid. One stat I’ve watched are fatalities for people 40-50 in Santa Clara County.
By early April, 4 people 40-50 died of Covid in SCC
Then, i think 1 person in their 40s passed away in May.
It stayed at 5 for a long, long time, then it finally rose to 6 about a couple weeks ago.
All throughout, there have been lots of people in their 40s testing positive, so even if many people weren’t getting tested in March, the number of positive cases May-July is much much higher, yet most of the deaths for people 40-50 occurred in March and April.
The why I will let the doctors answer (and they have been), but it’s clearly becoming a better and better time to get sick (although that may end if the system is swamped during the flu season).
I may have a different takeaway from this as you — to me, the data *supports* a stricter shelter-in-place now. Why should people be getting sick now when there’s a major development in repurposed therapeutics like every month? Why get sick now when all the new doctors are in the teaching hospitals (as has been discussed before, fatalities in hospitals increase in July).
To me, there’s a better chance of life getting back to normal before next summer from repurposed therapeutics than from a vaccine. So I feel it’s wise to be cautious when so many promising treatments could be coming. Many of the therapeutics thus far have been for severe cases — you might survive but by that point there could be lifelong damage. But imagine what happens when we have proven, cheap, ubiquitous treatments people can take at onset to avoid severe cases. We may have already found one (neubilized interferon beta). That’s why all the current hospitalizations are even more tragic — many thousands of people could survive with lifelong damage and they literally could have been months away from a treatment that could have likely averted that damage. Just imagine being the athlete who dreamed of playing pro, or the active social butterfly, who may survive, but whose life may be severely shortened and greatly limited after a tough hospitalization. Just imagine living with that pain the rest of your now reduced days wondering, if only the country had demonstrated a little more patience and a little more common sense, like pretty much all the other developed economies in the world except Sweden.
By early April, 4 people 40-50 died of Covid in SCC
Then, i think 1 person in their 40s passed away in May.
It stayed at 5 for a long, long time, then it finally rose to 6 about a couple weeks ago.
All throughout, there have been lots of people in their 40s testing positive, so even if many people weren’t getting tested in March, the number of positive cases May-July is much much higher, yet most of the deaths for people 40-50 occurred in March and April.
The why I will let the doctors answer (and they have been), but it’s clearly becoming a better and better time to get sick (although that may end if the system is swamped during the flu season).
I may have a different takeaway from this as you — to me, the data *supports* a stricter shelter-in-place now. Why should people be getting sick now when there’s a major development in repurposed therapeutics like every month? Why get sick now when all the new doctors are in the teaching hospitals (as has been discussed before, fatalities in hospitals increase in July).
To me, there’s a better chance of life getting back to normal before next summer from repurposed therapeutics than from a vaccine. So I feel it’s wise to be cautious when so many promising treatments could be coming. Many of the therapeutics thus far have been for severe cases — you might survive but by that point there could be lifelong damage. But imagine what happens when we have proven, cheap, ubiquitous treatments people can take at onset to avoid severe cases. We may have already found one (neubilized interferon beta). That’s why all the current hospitalizations are even more tragic — many thousands of people could survive with lifelong damage and they literally could have been months away from a treatment that could have likely averted that damage. Just imagine being the athlete who dreamed of playing pro, or the active social butterfly, who may survive, but whose life may be severely shortened and greatly limited after a tough hospitalization. Just imagine living with that pain the rest of your now reduced days wondering, if only the country had demonstrated a little more patience and a little more common sense, like pretty much all the other developed economies in the world except Sweden.