[VilleN]

Originally Posted by 2macinnis2

Thanks for posting, it's a worthwhile watch and I'll give my 2 cents from the perspective of a physician comfortable evaluating medical evidence (and as someone who has read a lot on Covid):

His points on population studies and why they are so important are salient. He gives a good summary on what as been done in Iceland and the small Italian town (don't recall the name). The cliff notes version is that by looking at large random populations, there are a number of asymptomatic individuals testing positive, who in turn lower the true mortality of the disease. He also discusses the Princess Diamond, where of 3500 aboard, 700 get infected and 7 die. He highlights how much we don't know about the virus. The actual mortality rate is most certainly below the 2-3% originally cited by the WHO, and most likely will fall below 1% in post hoc analyses.

Where he fails in his analysis is his evaluation of Italy (attributing disaster there to age, smoking, the soccer match, yada yada), and the appreciation to the degree Covid can potentially devastate ANY community. This is where Fauci has been much more astute. Mortality numbers at the end of the day may be more encouraging (between 0.1-1.0%), but there is so much more unquestioned morbidity from Covid than any Flu virus we have encountered. Every large city is seeing numbers of people age 30-50 admitted to hospital, many even needing ICU or intubation. See New Orleans (Mardi Gras?) See New York right now. See Seattle. See Wuhan. See Spain, see France. Don't think it can happen in Calgary? See what's happening in the town of Albany, Georgia, a city of less than 100k.

No one really knows, but right now by enforcing closures and social distancing we are buying time to hopefully start figuring this out. You do not need to be a doctor, scientist or epidemiologist to recognize that Covid has the ability to COLLAPSE a health care system like no other virus we have encountered in our lifetimes. I'll be back when I have a little more time to give my thoughts on where I think this is headed, again for whatever little that's worth...

Thank you, I really appreciate the thoughtful response and a physicians perspective. When looking at statistics it doesn't appear that very many people age 30-50 are reacting severely to the virus, not much more than regular influenza. The average age of death from COVID in Italy was 81... that is pretty much average life expectancy, and as he says it can be very difficult to tell whether it's death by COVID or death with COVID. I guess time will tell, and I think the main conclusion to draw from that video is that in order to ensure we react appropriately the data need to be properly analyzed.