500,000 Americans Have Died of COVID

Dairyland wrote:

I just want to say, it speaks bounds that the vast majority of college educated peoples consider themselves liberal/democrats.

Not this Master's degree fellow.

55YO wrote:

Dairyland wrote:

I just want to say, it speaks bounds that the vast majority of college educated peoples consider themselves liberal/democrats.

Not this Master's degree fellow.

Well! We have a single counterexample! Obviously your entire argument is dismantled!

The cause of death is the cause of death.

Flu is the same way, but flu doesn't cause 500,000 deaths nor do we have 500,000 cases of "died while having the flu".

We could look at heart disease the same way. Is it really died from heart disease? Or how many died due to their obesity.

Is it died from lung cancer? Or died from smoking?

We could play these games all day. Covid deaths aren't being treated any differently so we count them accordingly.

Meanwhile in countries where masks are common cases and deaths are much lower and hot spots are more contained.

Alan

2600 bro wrote:

Extrapolate 12 cases you just declared to be "not COVID" to 500k?? I think you're trolling.

No sh!t. The question is why people continue to feed him with the responses that he lives on.

The media is SOOOOO powerful. If they really cared about us, why didn't we shut down businesses and take the necessary precautions and initiative to minimize heart disease, stroke, world hunger, and other problems that are WAY more deadlier and dangerous than covid19. You are more likely to be killed struck by lightning if you're under 25 than die from covid.

steve. the. addict... wrote:

You are more likely to be killed struck by lightning if you're under 25 than die from covid.

Pearl Harbor was a hoax too. Anything that's official and mainstream is.

I love this site. I've missed "The X Files".

The point is, the typical person would not notice. That is what the data says. One more death per thousand in year 2020 over year 2019. NYC was relatively harder hit, earlier, and reporters in NYC reported. It was novel, and therefore news. The mitigations were not effective. See, for example https://covid19.biglocalnews.org/county-maps/index.html#/ Pick your favorite states. North Dakota vs. South Dakota, Wisconsin vs. Michigan. California was cited as an example that was doing so well through spring, summer, and fall because they were so compliant with the lockdowns. Come the latter part of November, and whatever climate/seasonality triggers kicked in, and California gets its primary wave. Prevailing opinion in long foresight (Inglesby, Nuzzo et al 2006) was that the mitigations would not especially effective, and certainly not when balanced against cost in anxiety, social disruption, and yes, economic activity. The China travel ban was not effective either. Hospitals were not overwhelmed. I never bothered to look at usage rates before the pandemic. It appears that 85% beds in use is normal. Rutgers study in New Jersey from around 2006 noted some days at 95% use in New Jersey happened every year, with one year (maybe 2005?) with 42 days at 95%. That 95% was concerning from a planning perspective, yet had zero impact on daily life and was not newsworthy for general mainstream media. There were facilities in 2020 that were stressed. Hospitals that were perennially stressed were more stressed. Under-resourced health care in parts of Italy, UK, and New York City have been documented for years. Los Angeles had tent hospitals in 2018; it is an occasional phenomenon there. COVID is not nothing, but it is not a unique fearsome bogeyman either. Rather, it fits into the normal ebb and flow of our mortal condition. Top risk factors, besides age, seem to be obesity and the highly correlated diabetes. Work on those, improve health metrics for the population. Probably better outcomes than any drug.

Anecdotally my local hospital converted 2 extra floor to ICUs - this seems out of the ordinary. Many state systems dramatically increased the availability of ICU beds to stay ahead of the surge. Usually the do try to keep things in the 50-80% of beds occupied as it is expensive to maintain and staff ICU space. Seems very naive to say the restrictions did nothing. At a minimum limits on indoor gatherings prevented the super-spreader events that are key to mitigating a lot of the spread. Look at a place like Manaus with actually no mitigation where they "achieved" a 75% attack rate in by October 2020! Upper range of US population infected by Oct 31st ~20%. Refs: https://science.sciencemag.org/content/371/6526/288https://covid19-projections.com/infections/us Furthermore, I'll add the lack of flu season this year strongly suggests intervention measures are effective at preventing respiratory virus transmission. Flu has a significantly lower R0 than COVID so it's transmission was suppressed much much more. COVID-19 sits in a sweet spot of transmissability, pre-symptomatic viral load, and severity that makes it a significant threat. The US did not deal with it swiftly or harshly enough so we have 500k+ dead AND a decimation of the economy. After about mid-April it was a complete lost cause. There should always be emphasis on public health from a preventative/general health standpoint - not disagreeing. The success of mRNA vaccine technology is perhaps the only bright spot from this pandemic.

pinesol II wrote:

The point is, the typical person would not notice. That is what the data says. One more death per thousand in year 2020 over year 2019.

This is total BS.

Every doc I've talked to says the ICUs are slammed with COVID patients like nothing they've every seen, especially this winter.

And this is with reasonable, albeit not draconian, mitigation efforts thru the summer and fall.

Excess death stats suggest this this is a well, well, well above normal mortality event.

I prefer to think that human progress means that "our mortal condition" not longer requires dying en masse to respiratory viruses. I guess if you are OK with 1920s style medicine (TBT to before antibiotics amirite) then sure, take this as it comes... yikes.

The Spanish Flu years were horrific because we didn't know enough to get out of our own way.

The Covid years the same, as obesity and mismanagement of health leading to diabetes is okey-dokey in today's population. Did anyone ever doubt the US would fare worse than anywhere else on earth given a pandemic like this?

How will we handle it next time around?

Thank you for your thoughtful reply. Discussing with people who are looking to references and evidence is good, even if we disagree on things. Reference for NJ study on hospital usage (from 2007) http://www.cshp.rutgers.edu/publications/hospital-capacity-patient-flow-and-emergency-department-use-in-new-jersey Executive summary is pp. ix to xiii "Annual occupancy rates for intensive and critical care units were higher than overall hospital occupancy for this period [1998 to 2005] but usually remained below 85%" Peak usage overall (ICU or all beds I cannot recall just now) in NJ in April 2020 was 85%. The usage level is based on the standard capacity, not the surge capacity. That does not mean that demand was spread out nicely uniform. NYC metro area was more affected. My local hospital did surge +25% ICU capacity. The real time hospital diversion system is based on standard capacity. So even though my local was "on divert" on occasion, it did not actually have to divert patients. I did 30 days of exterior photography at my local hospital. I quit because I got bored seeing the lack of activity -- far less than in normal times (I have regular business in a building adjacent to the hospital) -- plus I found the online real time hospital diversion list. A friend who is a nurse reported that conflicting federal, state, and facility guidance on handling COVID patients or potential COVID patients created confusion. Even in my worMy local hospital did surge +25% ICU capacity. The real time hospital diversion system is based on standard capacity. So even though my local was "on divert" on occasion, it did not actually have to divert patients. kplace (nothing to do with COVID), we have to work with mandates from different sources that conflict and it can be hard to satisfy all requirements. Anyway, read the executive summary. And bear in mind, it is from 2007. There may have been political constituencies to serve, but probably not expressly partisan ones, and certainly not as pitched as we see today. The science magazine article you reference does not speak to the effectiveness of mitigations. "These results confirm that when poorly controlled, COVID-19 can infect a large proportion of the population, causing high mortality." There is no comparison with "when well controlled" and certainly not the much harder lift showing control measures applied functioned to achieve control. The other link I am not seeing anything about mitigations. Measles vaccine introduction. There is an effective mitigation. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Measles_vaccine#/media/File:Measles_US_1938-2019.png The voluntary uptake was plenty enough to crater disease instances. Mandates did not come until the mid-70's and even those were avoided on deliberate opt-out. Anyway, the measles graph is the sort of picture the public looks to see in order to show effective mitigation. No fancy statistics required.

Harambe wrote:

pinesol II wrote:

The point is, the typical person would not notice. That is what the data says. One more death per thousand in year 2020 over year 2019.

This is total BS.

Actually, I think he's about right. There were about 3.3 million U.S. deaths in 2020 in a population of about 328 million, so 10 per thousand. Excess (and Covid) deaths were about 15% of them, so about 1.5 more deaths per thousand than expected.

The numbers he used aren't terribly wrong, and perhaps the typical person would not notice the change in the numbers.

On the other hand a 15% deviation in expected deaths, which had a 0.6% standard deviation over the previous decade is an enormous outlier for anyone paying attention.

Monkeys typing wrote:

Harambe wrote:

This is total BS.

Actually, I think he's about right. There were about 3.3 million U.S. deaths in 2020 in a population of about 328 million, so 10 per thousand. Excess (and Covid) deaths were about 15% of them, so about 1.5 more deaths per thousand than expected.

The numbers he used aren't terribly wrong, and perhaps the typical person would not notice the change in the numbers.

On the other hand a 15% deviation in expected deaths, which had a 0.6% standard deviation over the previous decade is an enormous outlier for anyone paying attention.

I disagree. If by a typical person you mean: someone who never reads the news, talks to people in healthcare, or bothers to look outside their front door, then sure, OK.

The excess deaths were relatively concentrated in time and space depending on when outbreaks occurred. Healthcare staff has generally been under strain whenever there is a local outbreak -- anyone with a HCW friend would know.

I supposed if the only metric you use is deaths, yes, it might not be noticed as most people aren't actuarial robots consuming the latest NVSS reports. I would argue that's reductionist to the point of being a strawman, though.

500 000 deaths but almost only the very old and sick.

If the New York variant is rising the current policy would have been an utter failure.

pinesol wrote:

The science magazine article you reference does not speak to the effectiveness of mitigations.

"These results confirm that when poorly controlled, COVID-19 can infect a large proportion of the population, causing high mortality." There is no comparison with "when well controlled" and certainly not the much harder lift showing control measures applied functioned to achieve control.

The other link I am not seeing anything about mitigations.

Measles vaccine introduction. There is an effective mitigation.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Measles_vaccine#/media/File:Measles_US_1938-2019.png

The voluntary uptake was plenty enough to crater disease instances. Mandates did not come until the mid-70's and even those were avoided on deliberate opt-out.

Anyway, the measles graph is the sort of picture the public looks to see in order to show effective mitigation. No fancy statistics required.

Is your argument that unless something is overwhelmingly effective such that "fancy statistics" are not needed to justify its effect, it is not a productive mitigation?

What happened is Manaus is evidence that COVID can ravage through the population when uncontrolled or poorly controlled. 70%+ attack rates are more than twofold what we see in the USA. That would correspond to over a million excess deaths.

Population-level public health measures are rarely going to present the striking effects you seem to desire. Heterogeneity in adherence, enforcement, tons of local factors such as density, the age pyramid, etc, and plenty of variables I can't think of can make data murky (not to mention lack of control groups or poor synthetic controls).

Demanding that everything is as clear as the measles vaccine, one of the most storied public health successes of all time, sets an inappropriately high bar for evidence.

I am open to the ideas that a lot of mitigations strategies lots of countries tried were barely effective (or even net-negative. i.e. school closures, outdoor activity restrictions, curfews) - but it seems some things DID work because we did not see 75% attack rate almost anywhere except a few places. I don't really fault governments for trying mitigation strategies and I really hope people can dig through the globs of data to found out what was actually effective post facto.

Going back to my earlier post, yes, I meant the typical person seeing what they see and not primed by the media. So, for example, in New Jersey, in 2005, there were 47 days with more than 95% occupancy of hospital beds. If the media raised a red flag on each and every such day, if CNN displayed a counter, if the full hospitals were top of fold in every newspaper, there would have been great fear. If the entirely ordinary obesity epidemic in the US were top of fold every day, maybe we would make progress on that. It is a tough nut. China from approximately March 2020 excluded most foreign media. That solved the fear portion of their COVID problem. No reporting, no fear. Somehow, in Wuhan, 10,000,000 tests in mid 2020, zero symptomatic positives, 300 asymptomatic. Follow-up, zepedestrianro asymptomatic spread. In 10,000,000 tests, a 1% false positive rate gives 100,000 positives. Color me skeptical.https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-020-19802-w

We're taking care of the people. Nothing to see here..

https://grandmageri422.me/2021/03/02/playing-god-head-of-moderna-says-that-they-are-hacking-the-software-of-life-and-rewriting-genetic-code-transhumanism-101/