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There have been 7M-13M excess deaths worldwide during the pandemic

economist.com

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Re: There have been 7M-13M excess deaths worldwide during the pandemic

#281

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There was a global 24% spike in roadway deaths? I find that hard to believe. Please provide evidence. In my country we saw a 10% reduction in road deaths through 2020.

GP means in the US, where there was a 24% spike in roadway deaths per miles driven. Here's some more details: "The nonprofit National Safety Council estimates in a report issued Thursday that 42,060 people died in vehicle crashes in 2020, an 8% increase over 2019 and the first jump in four years. Plus, the fatality rate per 100 million miles driven spiked 24%, the largest annual percentage increase since the council…

It makes sense. Cops were more reluctant to pull people over for covid safety reasons so drivers felt more emboldened speeding. The roads have been emptier so people have been going faster than norma, whether above or below the speed limit. Lack of other social entertainment may have caused thrill seeking in the form or speeding or racing, especially since drug and alcohol use seems to have gone up as well for the same reasons.

Re: There have been 7M-13M excess deaths worldwide during the pandemic

#282
post #257

That sounds like a pretty wild conspiracy theory. Any basis for this belief?

"Wild conspiracy theory"? Uh, what? It's exactly what happened where I live. At least half of our hospitalizations at peak were from neighboring areas that had no more capacity due to low or non-existent restrictions.

You are assuming causality there. That remains unproven. It could have been due to other factors, or random chance.

Re: There have been 7M-13M excess deaths worldwide during the pandemic

#283
post #234

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The average age in many African countries is in the mid teens, and we know that age is one of the strongest risk gradients. So Africa is not at all comparable with the aging West. Australia and NZ have the huge advantage of no land borders. Everything and everyone comes through a few ports and airports, which already had the infrastructure established to tightly control and monitor everything. Meanwhile most European…

>>And the U.S. couldn't close its land borders even if it wanted to. Given that until recently the US was quite militant in refusing to act upon the outbreak, and it's a country comprised of hundreds of million of people among which about a third showed themselves to be quite defiant towards even the most trivial emergency public health policies, I don't think it's fair to refer to border control as a relevant factor…

> Given that until recently the US was quite militant in refusing to act upon the outbreak

Factually untrue. The US was the first country to shut down China travel. And we got called Xenophobic for it. The mayor of Florence even held a “hug a Chinese” day in response.

https://rmx.news/article/article/fears-of-being-called-racis...

Re: There have been 7M-13M excess deaths worldwide during the pandemic

#284

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is not the case with automotive fatalities, they were up in 2020. "A 24% spike in roadway death rates is highest in 96 years"

I find this both surprising and not. Early in the pandemic, when most everything was shut down, I had to run an errand and ended up driving down some streets I’ve driven many times before. The percentage of cars driving erratically on the road was much higher than usual. I figure one of these might explain it: 1. People are stressed / distracted, and driving poorly because of it 2. Most drivers are well-meaning and c…

There was fewer pull overs by law enforcement on the roads because of risk of covid spread, at least initially.

Drug and alcohol use is up, due to lack of entertainment outside the home, and that affects driving as well. More speeding or racing for thrill seeking as a result of boredom.

Many new drivers for Amazon Prime, Uber Eats, Fedex/USPS etc. who are under time pressure to deliver fast, which they're not used to.

Re: There have been 7M-13M excess deaths worldwide during the pandemic

#285
post #95

This has me a bit confused: I look at the stats on cases and deaths per capita across various U.S. states, including California (which was very locked down, at least in theory) and Florida (which was flippant towards risks of contagion), and many states in between. The per capita cases+deaths are nearly identical across many states with very different approaches. This left me really wondering which measures were and…

IMHO if you want to understand what an effective response looks like - don't look at North America or Europe. Think Vietnam, Australia, New Zealand, and many parts of Africa, all of which had vastly better outcomes. Of course, I'm not an epidemiologist or public health expert, so while I have some guesses I'm not sure what exactly they did that was more effective - but there's no question that it was more effective.…

Those places all have low population density or are literally islands, that's not comparable at all.

Re: There have been 7M-13M excess deaths worldwide during the pandemic

#286
post #256

That sounds like a pretty wild conspiracy theory. Any basis for this belief?

> That sounds like a pretty wild conspiracy theory. The concept of viral reservoir seems to be pretty basic and well established concept in virology, both in terms of macrobiomes (i.e., populations) and in terms of microbiomes (i.e., microbiotic community in the gut). A quick googling will show you a huge list of well-research introductions from reputable sources, if you're interested in the topic.

Come on. Did you honestly believe I was referring to the concept of a viral reservoir as a conspiracy theory? This kind of obstructive style of conversation is unhelpful and tiresome. Some other poster above already tried that shtick, you can read my reply to them.

> Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize. Assume good faith.

Re: There have been 7M-13M excess deaths worldwide during the pandemic

#287

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://twitter.com/IAmTheActualET/status/139036896599463117...

There is literally no such thing as a red state or a blue state, so not surprising it doesn't map to anything.

It's almost perfectly urban vs. rural. Urban areas in "red" states are generally blue, and vice versa. "Blue states" are just those with mostly urban populations.

It became more extreme during the Trump era with many historically red suburbs around cities turning blue and some rural areas turning more red.

Re: There have been 7M-13M excess deaths worldwide during the pandemic

#288

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In how many of the countries that did really well did the virus have the same head start that it had in the US and Europe before getting discovered?

For me "countries that did really well" is mainly places like Singapore and Taiwan and South Korea, which got the virus earlier than USA and Europe but took it seriously from the very start.

Don’t forget Vietnam. One of the best responses!

Re: There have been 7M-13M excess deaths worldwide during the pandemic

#289

This has me a bit confused: I look at the stats on cases and deaths per capita across various U.S. states, including California (which was very locked down, at least in theory) and Florida (which was flippant towards risks of contagion), and many states in between. The per capita cases+deaths are nearly identical across many states with very different approaches. This left me really wondering which measures were and…

"We found that states with higher income inequality experienced a higher number of deaths due to COVID-19."

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7313247/

Re: There have been 7M-13M excess deaths worldwide during the pandemic

#290

This has me a bit confused: I look at the stats on cases and deaths per capita across various U.S. states, including California (which was very locked down, at least in theory) and Florida (which was flippant towards risks of contagion), and many states in between. The per capita cases+deaths are nearly identical across many states with very different approaches. This left me really wondering which measures were and…

Count of covid cases and deaths has been highly politicized and manipulated in Florida to the point of firing people for reporting them. Not sure how possible it is to get accurate info in this environment.

The firing of that official — there is a lot more to that story.

https://tallahasseereports.com/2020/05/20/rebekah-jones-firi...

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