341–350 of 361 posts
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That's why I said "in most places". And that article is from December. https://www.covid-georgia.com/today-in-georgia/hospitalizati...
In order for "most places" find a state that is close to their ordinary vacancy rates of 30%.
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This isn't some small percentage of people this is 3 - 8% [1] of people hospitalized! Despite not finding data for people not hospitalized many report suffering from and being hospitalized for failures of the pulmonary, endocrine, and digestive system. Sometimes people have strokes from sneezing. See I can make generalizing statements about bullshit too. [1]: https://annalsofintensivecare.springeropen.com/articles/10…
> This isn't some small percentage of people this is 3 - 8% [1] of people hospitalized And what percentage of people that get covid are hospitalized? Let's estimate and say 3% of people that get covid end up hospitalized. 3-8% of 3% is, frankly, a small percentage of people. You can make any percentage seem large and scary with the right framing ( https://xkcd.com/1252/ )
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Isn’t it almost certainly the case that the ‘unstoppable’ thing it turns in to will basically be more akin to a general cold though? The thing that makes this virus deadly is also the thing we are coding against in the vaccine.
Not necessarily. For example, some of the more recent SARS-CoV-2 variants spread more easily because the virus causes a more severe infection, which is transmissable for a longer period of time. It's also not a guarantee that the virus will evolve into something weaker. There are serious diseases like measles and smallpox that have circulated for thousands of years while remaining as deadly as they ever were. Sometim…
Right and our vaccines have maintained efficacy against these things.
> It's also not a guarantee that the virus will evolve into something weaker
No but it is almost certainly the case if the past is anything to go on
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This kind of cavalier attitude towards half a million people dying bothers me, particularly when it’s very likely that our death totals are significantly higher than they could have been with better adherence to guidelines, better guidelines to begin with, etc. Those excess deaths won’t be so quickly forgotten by people who have lost family and friends. Should we be pragmatic in public policy? Of course. You can’t pr…
> This kind of cavalier attitude towards half a million people dying bothers me > I really don’t think we’ll look back on this and think, “Eh, a half a million people died, oh well,” Well, we look back on the past 2 decades (2000-2020) and think "eh, 700k+ people (mainly the elderly) have died from influenza, oh well." But actually most people don't even think that. Most people just... don't even keep track of how ma…
675k Americans died in the 1918 Flu, and we’re still talking about that one. We may very well surpass that in raw numbers (although not in percent of population) with COVID.
And lots of people care about the 3 million people that die every year! We’re constantly trying to make driving safer, investing in new therapies for heart disease and cancer, etc. I’ve seen many articles about the increase in suicide in the US over the past decade, written with the hope of stirring action and driving change. There’s no reason to accept potentially preventable deaths as a matter of course.
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> This kind of cavalier attitude towards half a million people dying bothers me > I really don’t think we’ll look back on this and think, “Eh, a half a million people died, oh well,” Well, we look back on the past 2 decades (2000-2020) and think "eh, 700k+ people (mainly the elderly) have died from influenza, oh well." But actually most people don't even think that. Most people just... don't even keep track of how ma…
35k per year from influenza is literally an order of magnitude less than the current death toll (but we should still take it seriously! I hope COVID normalizes masks during flu season). You or I are much more likely to know or be connected to someone who died of COVID this past year than of the normal seasonal flu in any given year. 675k Americans died in the 1918 Flu, and we’re still talking about that one. We may v…
But it kills consistently year after year, decade after decade. Influenza has been consistently killing for how many years in a row before covid showed up? So really, the "current death toll" of the flu is in the many millions by now. Unless you reset the count after every year in which case covid's death count doesn't get to keep ticking up forever either and needs to reset to 0 at some year boundary.
> 675k Americans died in the 1918 Flu, and we’re still talking about that one.
And in 1918 America had less than one third the current population. 675k out of 100M is way deadlier than 500k out of 350M. Also we weren't really "talking about it" until very recently. Prior to 2020 almost nobody talked about it except people who study public health.
Until we have challenge trials, how do we know whether or not other variables, such as natural herd immunity and seasonality are not also significant contributing factors to the 'substantial reduction'?
Because its still winter and herd immunity from natural infections is a gradual process not a steep cliff? At the very least it seems like those factors could be accounted for.
With the rapid spread of some of the variants, it would be foolish to assume that what we are dealing with now is the same thing as what we are dealing with before, and we really don't know enough about the new variants. Maybe they are spreading, but not making people sick enough, increasing herd immunity.
It's difficult to account for these things because the same time these new variants started exploding is the exact same time we shifted resources from random testing to mass vaccination.
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When something with ~30-50% mortality starts doing a COVID there won't be room for anti-vaxxers and anti-lockdown people. With COVID you can get sick and live. With something like ebola you get sick and die, or you go through the most traumatic event of your life. It doesn't leave a middle ground of disbelief. So I think there would be the political will for a second lockdown if our next global pandemic looks like eb…
Ebola does not spread as easily as COVID so a lockdown would not be needed.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Western_African_Ebola_virus_ep...
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> Given the high correlation between COVID# cases (or %Positive) and hospitalizations, why not just use COVID# and "gain" 2 weeks of information? Because it is not given and - if given - is not reassuringly close to 1. Correlation is positive, alright. But if you calculate hospitalization as percentage of cases, even adjusting for a lag, it is far from constant. Eg in Canada this ratio was 6x time higher in the first…
Sure, over the whole run of the pandemic the case count has to be adjusted for changes in the testing regime. But in many countries the testing has been reasonably constant for many months, so the case count is a good indicator of the state of things.
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35k per year from influenza is literally an order of magnitude less than the current death toll (but we should still take it seriously! I hope COVID normalizes masks during flu season). You or I are much more likely to know or be connected to someone who died of COVID this past year than of the normal seasonal flu in any given year. 675k Americans died in the 1918 Flu, and we’re still talking about that one. We may v…
> 35k per year from influenza is literally an order of magnitude less than the current death toll But it kills consistently year after year, decade after decade. Influenza has been consistently killing for how many years in a row before covid showed up? So really, the "current death toll" of the flu is in the many millions by now. Unless you reset the count after every year in which case covid's death count doesn't g…
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This is a worldwide pandemic, not restricted to the borders of the US. People in countries around the world complied with quarantine, but their healthcare systems were still under real pressure. If they were not overwhelmed, it was a close run thing only prevented by social distancing. Hospitals cancelled and delayed medical procedures around the world due to this: Italy, Spain, the UK, etc. While the worst case scen…
It’s not clear to me how illustrating the flaws in one country’s healthcare system should affect the decision of another’s who hasn’t experienced the same flaws even with greater per-capita cases of the virus. My comment was geared towards America because I’m an American talking on a forum operated by an American company. Italy can lock down to their heart’s content- that’s their prerogative.