Earlier quoted context omitted.
17% excess mortality (and that’s assuming this 1% baseline we pulled out of the air, remember) doesn’t mean that the pandemic is only responsible for those excess deaths – a bunch of people who might have otherwise been expected to get hit by a car worked from home all year, or died from COVID instead, etc. So the pandemic is responsible for the 17% (in this scenario) uplift above baseline plus an unknown portion of…
Apparently suicides and deaths from starvation were also up significantly. It will indeed be interesting to see how the distribution of deaths plays out.
There have been 7M-13M excess deaths worldwide during the pandemic
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Re: There have been 7M-13M excess deaths worldwide during the pandemic
#292Please don’t look at 7m-13m number and compare it to 7 billion population and say oh it’s only 0.1-0.2%. Pretty much ever country has seen a 15-20% increase in excess mortality rates (20% more people dying than averages in the past), this is huge. This is one of the best up to date visualizations on this topic, scroll down and see breakdowns by country - https://www.ft.com/content/a2901ce8-5eb7-4633-b89c-cbdf5b386...
Re: There have been 7M-13M excess deaths worldwide during the pandemic
#293Earlier quoted context omitted.
Virus reservoirs are things. This is why New Zealand has not admitted tourists, and why their case count is so low.
> Virus reservoirs are things. Clearly I was not suggesting the concept of a virus reservoir was a conspiracy theory. I don't know if you were being deliberately obtuse, but it does not help the conversation. The parent made 3 claims, increasingly improbable, with the last seeming to be a hateful conspiracy theory. >> Except these surrounding towns act as virus reservoirs for the large cities. The assertion is the to…
This all said, there's a germ of truth in the unhinged paranoia - it's a bit like rolling coal. You heard of rolling coal? It's where people modify their trucks to make them emit toxic black smoke. It's bad for your engine. It's bad for your fuel economy. But, it's also bad for those pussy cyclists and eco-freaks who keep on going on about global warming.
There is a powerful current in politics across the west that is actively, self-destructively antagonistic towards anything an expert says - and it's not based on profound disbelief in the value of expertise, but rather a deep disaffection, a desire to tear down the whole edifice of culture that makes you feel small - and that has carried into coronavirus precautions, where the bogeyman is not the virus, but the intrusive, patronizing and sinister powers of 'public health', a perfect representation of the entire institutional culture that your average NRA member hates.
Re: There have been 7M-13M excess deaths worldwide during the pandemic
#294Earlier quoted context omitted.
> If this had been a "real" plague, of the kind humanity has faced repeatedly in the past (and has been expected for some time now), we would have been totally and utterly screwed. Not necessarily. Part of the reason there was so much pushback against public health mandates was because covid was so tame. You are being forced, by the government, to wear a mask, isolate from others, and stop going to work for an entire…
I think that's exactly why the COVID pandemic has been so bad. The outcomes aren't as terrifying as say, ebola. If COVID had been ebola but with incredibly high transmission rate, people would have shut down hard. Everyone. Everywhere. With an extreme abundance of caution. I bet we would have stopped that early. Instead, you have this insidious disease that is so easy for people to compare to the flu and common cold,…
Re: There have been 7M-13M excess deaths worldwide during the pandemic
#295Earlier quoted context omitted.
That is an even less fair comparison. The Chinese government has a tremendous amount of power over the daily life of its citizens in a way that isn't replicable most other places. There were stories of China literally welding doors to apartment buildings shut and forcibly dragging people away to quarantine facilities as soon as they tested positive.
FWIW from a brief search months ago it seemed that the welding stories are hearsay. Iirc you can find reference to them in the news but it didn't sound concrete.
Re: There have been 7M-13M excess deaths worldwide during the pandemic
#296This 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…
Re: There have been 7M-13M excess deaths worldwide during the pandemic
#297Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's disheartening seeing people in the US mad at the 30% vaccine hesitant there, while 6B+ at the gates have no vaccines available at all. The US isn't an island, and the borders are nowhere near closed. The variants that grow in the other 96% of humans that aren't americans will doubtlessly end up there, and will be end up tending toward vaccine resistance due to selection pressure. I think this is going to get muc…
This might be a blindspot among the US citizens. I know the European countries have united to supply vaccines to the developing world with their Covax program. But I don't think the US is doing anything similar. I'm not even sure how the US would go about doing that. Would it have to be a Presidentially-ordered/led initiative? As a private citizen, I'd be 100% for the US helping to vaccinate the world. It's an obviou…
Not just that but it's economically beneficial as well. There are a lot of US jobs that are dependent on exports and tourism from those countries.
Re: There have been 7M-13M excess deaths worldwide during the pandemic
#298This 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…
The places hit hardest were very dense cities... viruses spread very well in big cities, regardless of mitigation steps.
Re: There have been 7M-13M excess deaths worldwide during the pandemic
#299This 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…
Re: There have been 7M-13M excess deaths worldwide during the pandemic
#300Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think that's exactly why the COVID pandemic has been so bad. The outcomes aren't as terrifying as say, ebola. If COVID had been ebola but with incredibly high transmission rate, people would have shut down hard. Everyone. Everywhere. With an extreme abundance of caution. I bet we would have stopped that early. Instead, you have this insidious disease that is so easy for people to compare to the flu and common cold,…
It s so easy to compare with common cold because both are coronavirii... Look I wore the mask like everyone in HK since the first day, but you have to admit you talk of it like it could kill you. It wouldn't, deaths are rare. Millions of people are not a big relative number... There are things that must kill way more that you consider absolute necessity, like coca cola, whisky or cigarets.