this post was submitted on 19 May 2025
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Weird News - Things that make you go 'hmmm'
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Oh definitely.
Just look at what happened when a global pandemic arose. Even with it's inevitable arrival, millions of people caused the country to descend into ridiculous conspiracy theories, throwing tantrums about wearing masks, hoarding toilet paper, and attempts to profit of hand sanitizer.
And the government was front and center of all of those actions. Now we have the same government again, but this time it's like they are on cruelty and greed steroids. And the first of living has gone up sharply because of all the financial missteps, so that's going to make things even worse.
Not to mention, H5N1 in humans is massively more deadly than Covid. I think Covid gave everyone a false sense of security as to how biblical a plague is or isn't when it really gets going.
Even without the vaccine or anything, we could have lived through Covid with its 3% case fatality rate (rising to 10% or something when the hospitals got overwhelmed), and it would have been disabling, but nothing we couldn't bounce back from in a few years. Countries lose way more people than that in wars, modern societies are incredibly redundant. It's not fine when it's people you know, but at the end of the day the world moves on.
H5N1 is somewhere around 30%, last I checked, and that's with lots of attention and care for the handful of people who've gotten sick.
The original covid strain had a ~10-20% death rate. While the current strains death rate is low relative to that it also retains a fairly high casualty rate in terms of long covid brain fog and exhaustion as well as secondary effects (higher stroke, heart attack and diabetes risk for at least a year after).
I'm pretty sure that was an impact of inaccurate early estimates of the CFR. I won't swear to it but I think that's what was going on.
https://www.thelancet.com/journals/laninf/article/PIIS1473-3099(20)30244-9/fulltext
My personal headcanon was that it was around 1-3% with good care, and 10-15% or something when hospitals got overwhelmed and people in the "real sick" grouping had to go it on their own and just see if they made it.
And yes, chronic impacts from Covid are much higher than for most acute diseases, that's a good point. It's still very mild overall compared to most novel deadly respiratory diseases though.
Ah, gotta admit I've stopped keeping track of most covid research. Your personal headcanon seems about right according to the linked article.
Comorbidities are an important factor as well. I'm honestly surprised the cruise didn't have higher spread but I guess after they knew/were quarantined they upped their prevention protocols.
With the current doctor and nursing shortage we're probably in a medium range at baseline nowadays. We also know multiple infections increase chance of mortality and other effects which is harder to address.