I hope this isn't a dumb question, but if the mortality rate of this flu is so aggressive, could it end up burning out before it spreads too widely?
this post was submitted on 28 Apr 2024
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High mortality rate is typically a negative factor in disease spread, but it's somewhat nuanced. For example, stuff like incubation period plays a role as well. If it's deadly in the end, but it takes a while for a person to get to that point, they can go on infecting a lot of other people before they realize they're sick. The virus will also continue to mutate, so a less deadly variant might emerge that's better at spreading. Very difficult to say what will happen at the moment unfortunately.
Excuse me while I go stock up.
Ah Shit, here we go again.
Well, here it is folks. We all know what happens when the USA is tasked with controling an outbreak. It was nice seeing you in person for the last 18 months. I will now prepare for another lock down.
Can you imagine? If the USA ends up with another deadly epidemic with rampant community spread?
Ranchi is in India.
Yeah, that's not the point. Viruses don't respect national borders.
Well there were outbreaks before. They were handled by the people that are supposed to handle it. Covid... Well the people that are supposed to handle it were fired and and the administration in charge thought a pandemic would be good to thin out the city voters block.
I really can't imagine people tolerating another lockdown, especially given that most people now think that the last set of lockdowns didn't achieve much of anything in the end. I expect that we're just going to let the next pandemic rip and take no measures at all.
Yep. We in the west never even had a thorough lockdown and the capitalists acted like it was the end of the world. The Covid pandemic is still raging, killing people and leaving the survivors with debilitating Long Covid, but the capitalists just want to let it rip because actually addressing the pandemic requires too much change. Some of us will die, but that's a price the overlords are willing to pay to keep themselves on top.
There's no way they take bird flu seriously
exactly
As bad as the U.S. covid response ended up being long-term, and even as a general doomer, I do think if this ends up a serious threat of breaching containment that they won't just sit back and let it happen.
A 1-in-2 fatality rate perks up ears far faster than 1-in-100, even the most deluded of capitalists would know how devastating that would be for profits.
I'm expecting that even with 1-in-2 fatality rate we'll see an initial spike where nobody believes it, before the reality starts to set in.
But the collective psychosis from another million dead is going to be fucking wild
The human fatality rate of COVID-19 is 1-3%, depending on how you count cases. From what I've seen reported, the human fatality rate of this strain of bird flu is closer to 50%.
(Lots of "ifs" coming) If this starts to spread human-to-human, if it spreads as easily as COVID, and if we don't lock down and this becomes endemic like COVID, COVID will look like a walk in the park compared to what this will do. I'm crossing my fingers that COVID was in that mortality sweet spot where it was bad enough to cause a lot of deaths but not quite bad enough to make officials make people angry with actually taking care of the problem. 50% mortality should be comfortably on the side of "deal with it at all cost."
Indeed