Leaks from China in mid-Jan which our govts (and opposition, not taking any sides) knew about showed how serious this was, and what it required to keep safe, but my post was alas prophetic: The 21st Century.
People do not comprehend how strongly “good things” need to be defended from the constant onslaught of those who want to steer shit crazy, or the simple fact of entropy.
I might think about making an effortpost with links to original studies, but so far it seems like coronavirus:
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kills seven times as many in the 20 - 29 age group than flu
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kills eighteen times as many in the 30 - 39 age group than flu
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kills thirty-seven times as many in the 40 - 49 age group than flu
… and the numbers from there are all just up, up, up.
In the 40 - 49 group, it appears to kill just over one in thirty people infected. It also seems to kill fewer 80+ than in the 60 - 79 age group.
That’s just the death rate, not the infection rate of those who need to be placed on ventilators to live, but then make a recovery, and it also ignores the people in all those groups who survive but are left with crippled respiratory systems or other organ damage.
I’m not a huge fan of Piers Morgan but I agree with him that if it was disproportionately hitting the young, most older people would do everything in their power to protect them and would NOT be gloating all over the place about how it “only” targets the under-30’s (link).
If age was an ethnicity, I also wonder how many Tumblr-istas would feel fine saying “Oh, it only kills the (insert ethnic group), so let’s partayyyy!”?
And something to ponder for anyone reading this and tapping previously-unacknowledged ideas about “The weak should fear the strong,” is that any random adaptation may cause it to create symptoms, such as turning a healthy immune system against its owner, which increases the rate of death in younger groups - something I (late thirties, so sort of neither) don’t wish to see happen, but eminently possible. 