There have been 7M-13M excess deaths worldwide during the pandemic • Hacker News Board

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

#381

Post by ceejayoz » Mon, May 17, 2021, 2:13 AM UTC

raydev wrote: post #357

ceejayoz wrote: post #350

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Surely that wasn’t the only tightened restriction or change in behavior during the case surge, though? There are a lot of confounding variables in these analyses. It’s going to take years to tease them apart, and we may never truly know for certain in some cases.

Perhaps, but do you lock everything down mid-spike when you know the current rate will lead to extreme triage measures within two weeks, or do you wait two weeks to act and start rejecting patients as they continue to flood in?

"the rise in cases only reversed after we shut down schools both times" implies a causal relationship, though, while ignoring the other mitigations that went into effect.

The point is not "is it wise to take precautions"; that's obvious. The point is we don't necessarily have great data on which precautions work better than others because they're largely all being put into effect at the same time.

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

#382

Post by [deleted] » Mon, May 17, 2021, 2:13 AM UTC

hervature wrote: post #376

raydev wrote: post #339

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah because it appears to have helped reverse cases both in January and this month.

You mean cases started to drop after everyone stopped traveling for Christmas and vaccines started to hit meaningful numbers?

[deleted]

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

#383

Post by nradov » Mon, May 17, 2021, 2:14 AM UTC

greggman3 wrote: post #367

shoguning wrote: post #260

Earlier quoted context omitted.

According to a study in PNAS, shelter-in-place policies in the US did not work: https://www.pnas.org/content/118/15/e2019706118 Another study in Eur J Clin Inv had similar findings comparing countries: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/eci.13484 COVID went wild basically everywhere. There were a few strong exceptions: China (apparently), Australia, New Zealand and some others. What these had in common was v…

Here in Japan they've never really had lockdown. Restaurants have remained open the entire time, just asked to close at 8pm. I could/can walk by them at 7pm and see them full of people talking and eating without masks. I was invited by Japanese friends the entire time (didn't go) and would see them posting pictures of their restaurant dinner gatherings on Facebook. Further, as a comparison, Tokyo Metro has 38 million…

On the other hand Japan has an older median age than most other countries. We know that age is a crucial risk factor for COVID-19 so on that basis they should have had a higher death toll, but didn't.

My guess is that the low obesity rate is the critical factor, but that remains somewhat speculative.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7430889/

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

#384

Post by nradov » Mon, May 17, 2021, 2:15 AM UTC

raydev wrote: post #339

auxym wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some canadian provinces are still closing down schools at the moment.

Yeah because it appears to have helped reverse cases both in January and this month.

Did it actually help, or was that just coincidental?

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

#385

Post by colordrops » Mon, May 17, 2021, 2:15 AM UTC

disordinary wrote: post #217

pmoriarty wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On the other hand, people have been avoiding going to the doctor, so diagnosis and treatment of all sorts of preventable/treatable diseases (like cancer) is down, leading to excess death, disability, and suffering.

Most of those diseases have a long tail so we won't see the death rate from them for 2020 probably. They'll increase the death rate in a year or two unfortunately.

Things like diabetes and kidney disease which can cause acute failures if not managed properly are certainly causing short term upticks in deaths.

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

#386

Post by raydev » Mon, May 17, 2021, 2:18 AM UTC

sam_4675 wrote: post #310

Spooky23 wrote: post #244

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes. Workplaces with lots of contact always are. In Nov-Feb, I was losing 40-60 employees a week to infection or quarantine. Mostly people in essential IT support positions My sons school was open most of the year, but shutdown for a month due to teacher quarantines.

Schools are different than a business setting. Young children have less chance of getting it and less of spreading it. https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/hcp/pediatric-hcp....

You just contradicted the website you linked, I'm confused.

> Hospitalization rates in children are significantly lower than hospitalization rates in adults with COVID-19, suggesting that children may have less severe illness from COVID-19 compared to adults.

Less severe response to it, not "less chance of getting it." And then just two lines later:

> Recent evidence suggests that compared to adults, children likely have similar viral loads in their nasopharynx,7 similar secondary infections rates, and can spread the virus to others

I don't know how you arrived at your opinion here.

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

#387

Post by hedora » Mon, May 17, 2021, 2:20 AM UTC

sneak wrote: post #22

hedora wrote: post #11

The earth’s population is 7.9b, so the excess deaths are 0.1% of the population. COVID’s mortality rate is about 0.5%, so roughly 1/5 of the population has has had it (or died of other related things, like starvation in developing countries due to the lockdown stopping food harvests in California). Currently, 1.45b doses of a vaccine have been administered, so about as many people have had the vaccine (partially, at…

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…

Also, most variants develop in other mammals. Even at 100% human vaccination, we’re likely to see new variants.

(Everyone that can should get vaccinated anyway.)

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

#388

Post by raydev » Mon, May 17, 2021, 2:20 AM UTC

chmod600 wrote: post #355

raydev wrote: post #325

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t know why no one is saying this, but Ontario’s ICU numbers skyrocketed to 900 at the peak just a few weeks ago. We’re only down to 700 occupied beds now and normal medical procedures are still paused because of the enormous ICU load. It wasn’t until we closed schools that the trend reversed. People are so quick to blame fear without actually looking at the data

Is the data conclusive? I try to look at the data, but it seems like a mixed bag when it comes to school closures.

I don't know if we can conclusively say what specific action needs to be taken other than halt contact. We were on an extremely bad path, and I don't know what else could have been done since we had little vaccine supply at that time.

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

#389

Post by raydev » Mon, May 17, 2021, 2:25 AM UTC

ceejayoz wrote: post #381

raydev wrote: post #357

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Perhaps, but do you lock everything down mid-spike when you know the current rate will lead to extreme triage measures within two weeks, or do you wait two weeks to act and start rejecting patients as they continue to flood in?

"the rise in cases only reversed after we shut down schools both times" implies a causal relationship, though, while ignoring the other mitigations that went into effect. The point is not "is it wise to take precautions"; that's obvious. The point is we don't necessarily have great data on which precautions work better than others because they're largely all being put into effect at the same time.

> point is we don't necessarily have great data on which precautions work better than others

We actually do, though, and it's preventing close contact of non-household members and preventing sharing enclosed spaces with non-household members for long periods of time.

People spread the virus before they even know they're sick, and a subset of sick people either need to go to work despite being sick, or they just don't care.

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

#390

Post by eyelidlessness » Mon, May 17, 2021, 2:36 AM UTC

giantg2 wrote: post #373

eyelidlessness wrote: post #354

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I didn’t object to the quantification, I objected to minimizing the impact and characterizing it as temporary. I don’t know the distribution of long term impact (and as far as I can tell no one does, unless we have time travelers about), but it’s pretty well known that there’s more than mortality rate at stake.

"(and as far as I can tell no one does, unless we have time travelers about)" The CDC and others have looked at at long term effects, which is where I got those estimates. If you mean it's too early to tell because not enough time has gone by, then we could say the same about the vaccine (which is somewhat valid for both sides, but lacking evidence relegates it more to a belief than fact-based opinion). The comment w…

This is the part I object to:

> just makes it so you can't taste or smell anything for a few days along with fatigue and flu-like symptoms

Maybe for the “vast majority” that’s true, I can’t speak to the distribution of ongoing impact people are experiencing or will over time. But there are a lot of people who have been infected, have survived, and have ongoing complications that go well beyond this description.