<story><title>What other coronaviruses tell us about SARS-CoV-2</title><url>https://www.quantamagazine.org/what-can-other-coronaviruses-tell-us-about-sars-cov-2-20200429/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>mfer</author><text>Strokes, kidney disease, and other problems are happening to people who get this. Looking at death rate alone doesn’t tell of all the consequences</text></item><item><author>hristov</author><text>I think everybody should carefully read the short section that says &amp;quot;Does the amount of exposure affect the severity?&amp;quot;.&lt;p&gt;Some people are looking at antibody studies that show that large parts of the population are somehow affected and then doing back of the napkin math and deciding that this is really not worse than the flu in terms of death rate. They are further encouraged by the fact that people that die tend to be older and with pre-existing conditions. Then they say we should open everything up and get everything &amp;quot;back to normal&amp;quot;, and sometimes they add that this is just a way to winnow out the old and the weak.&lt;p&gt;As problematic as the latter statement is, the above thinking is actually dangerously optimistic. Experience shows us that in specific situations with prolonged&amp;#x2F;repeated exposure, the death rates are much higher. Also young and healthy people may get seriously sick and die due to high level of exposure.&lt;p&gt;This has already been happening in hospitals that did not have sufficient protective equipment&amp;#x2F;procedures.&lt;p&gt;If we open everything up and get into a situation where the virus is all over the place we can get into a horrible spiral of increased exposure and increased death rates etc.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>nyhc99</author><text>I read that there was visible lung tissue damage forming the characteristic broken glass pattern on CT scans of 58% of the infected but asymptomatic carriers on the Diamond Princess cruise. That to me adds a sobering footnote to the process of developing herd immunity. Most of us won&amp;#x27;t die, but do we walk away with long-term impairment of our lungs and possibly other organs?</text></comment>
<story><title>What other coronaviruses tell us about SARS-CoV-2</title><url>https://www.quantamagazine.org/what-can-other-coronaviruses-tell-us-about-sars-cov-2-20200429/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>mfer</author><text>Strokes, kidney disease, and other problems are happening to people who get this. Looking at death rate alone doesn’t tell of all the consequences</text></item><item><author>hristov</author><text>I think everybody should carefully read the short section that says &amp;quot;Does the amount of exposure affect the severity?&amp;quot;.&lt;p&gt;Some people are looking at antibody studies that show that large parts of the population are somehow affected and then doing back of the napkin math and deciding that this is really not worse than the flu in terms of death rate. They are further encouraged by the fact that people that die tend to be older and with pre-existing conditions. Then they say we should open everything up and get everything &amp;quot;back to normal&amp;quot;, and sometimes they add that this is just a way to winnow out the old and the weak.&lt;p&gt;As problematic as the latter statement is, the above thinking is actually dangerously optimistic. Experience shows us that in specific situations with prolonged&amp;#x2F;repeated exposure, the death rates are much higher. Also young and healthy people may get seriously sick and die due to high level of exposure.&lt;p&gt;This has already been happening in hospitals that did not have sufficient protective equipment&amp;#x2F;procedures.&lt;p&gt;If we open everything up and get into a situation where the virus is all over the place we can get into a horrible spiral of increased exposure and increased death rates etc.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>nradov</author><text>And how many strokes, kidney disease, and other problems were caused by other respiratory system viruses before COVID-19? We don&amp;#x27;t know because we&amp;#x27;ve never really looked.</text></comment>