SacredCowSlayer wrote: ↑Tue Mar 10, 2020 7:05 pmWhile I don’t claim to have any definitive answer(s) to your questions above, I would frankly be shocked if there wasn’t a steep rise in hospitalizations for otherwise ordinary flu-like symptoms. Given the vague diagnostic criteria (essentially overlapping symptoms associated with a “common cold”), I imagine there are a lot of people who are freaking out when they get so much as a sore throat or a fever these days.
simonshack wrote:"Hospitals overwhelmed by patients with pneumonia?"
I'd really appreciate if you could provide reliable sources / data / statistics for this claim of yours. Is it just hearsay - or can you support your claim with verifiable information? Are you talking about the hospitals being overwhelmed (understandably) by worried citizens struck by seasonal flu - or by actual pneumonia patients?
I am talking about actual cases of pneumonia. Some of these patients die, some don't, but the bottom line is that a lot of people get sick all at the same time. Of course this is
hearsay -- short of doxing my friends and jeopardizing their career, I have no way to "prove" it ; and I wouldn't want anybody to take it at face value, I wouldn't take it either; still, I must add that the same kind of story is also repeated a bit everywhere by Italian MSM whenever they ask doctors how the situation is. Would you consider that a source? It's MSM, so I guess not. (for example, here:
https://www.dagospia.com/rubrica-29/cro ... 229349.htm).
Let's just say that I'm using what I've heard and read to reason hypothetically: if this was true, what explanation can there be? You may consider this a waste of time I know - it is certainly a waste of time compared to some good research producing proof of course - so you can ignore it.
Nevertheless. what I have is the following: this is
not a common virus because 1) it is extremely contagious, so a lot of people catch all at the same time, which makes things unmanageable and 2) it causes double interstitial pneumonia in almost all acute cases. A pneumonia which is difficult to come out from and which often leads to people needing respirators (of which there is shortage). The bottom line being that
no other known virus normally causes this in this manner, so, again, if the situation described was true, I don't see how this can be faked without willing participation of all doctors and nurses. And if this is not true, then not only my doctor friends lead a double life and lied to me, but so have the thousands of doctors and nurses in northern Italy who are involved in this.
To add to this: On the one hand, you could say the situation for society at large is not so dire, a minor percentage of the elderly population is being affected. Like you suggest, regular flu numbers. It is sad, but certainly not as traumatic as war or economic collapse, therefore media and politicians are being disingenuous and tricking everyone for nefarious purposes, while a lot of fakery is being added to the mix to make things worse.
On the other hand, if hospitals are overwhelmed, because they are on a mission to save people but don't have the equipment or the infrastructure to properly do it, it matters little if the numbers or the demographic don't part much from the common flu; it only matters
the rapid and acute manner in which this is happening. In such a situation the only way for hospitals to manage is if people get infected and sick
at a much slower pace, hence the need to quarantine.
Society, in other words, may be responding to the need for hospitals to cope, rather than to a global sanitary catastrophe per se. If that makes sense.