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Fine, I'll run a regression analysis but it won't make you happy

natesilver.net

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Re: Fine, I'll run a regression analysis but it won't make you happy

#21
post #14
post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the severity of long Covid might be more debilitating as it is my understanding that the long-term consequences of pneumonia is not as long lasting. I've not known of people that have had to change their whole way of life, and possibly their career, because of pneumonia or flu but have met a few that have had to do so as a consequence of long Covid.

Psychosomatic illnesses are in fact quite serious, but they require psychological treatment, not lockdowns of society.

The incidence of heart attack and stroke increases significantly after COVID infection, so please spare us your appeal to “psychosomatic illnesses”:

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8321431/

(I should get bonus points for this being a Swedish study as well, since every COVID denier loves to wave around their flag.)

Re: Fine, I'll run a regression analysis but it won't make you happy

#22
post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

in what ways have we not already returned to normality?

I think we’ve returned to a new, more callous form of reality, where mass injury, illness, and death are normalized, and any real concern for public health or intervention, including that which was considered entirely rational before COVID, is now greeted as impossible or insanity.

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Re: Fine, I'll run a regression analysis but it won't make you happy

#23
post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You seem to have lived through a different pandemic than the rest of the world. It's hard to say the GBD was wrong when Sweden didn't lock down and they weren't exactly seeing bodies pile up in the street. Covid is now here to stay, ranking somewhere in severity between the common cold, flu or pneumonia.

> Covid is now here to stay, ranking somewhere in severity between the common cold, flu or pneumonia. I know it’s ideologically motivated, but it’s surprising people just bold-faced lie about the impact of COVID, when the stats are there for everyone to see. In the US, COVID is on track to kill ~200K people this year: https://covid.cdc.gov/covid-data-tracker The cold and flu will not kill anywhere near this number, p…

Is that tracking deaths from COVID or deaths with COVID? I have doubts that the numbers are not overstated (by how much, I'm not sure).

Looking at CDC data for excess deaths from Jan through July 2023*, excess deaths have averaged around 1.7%. Deaths reported as being due to COVID are running at 2.7%.

Annualizing and turning the data back to excess deaths, that means of the ~200K people that "COVID is on track to kill", only about 53.4K total excess deaths are expected, projecting from Jan-Jul, or projecting mid-Jan-Jul, excess would be only 31.5K.

Perhaps COVID is saving 146K-169K lives and then killing 200K this year?

* This is to avoid the recent data incompleteness. If I include more recent data records, my argument becomes stronger, not weaker. Setting aside the first two weeks in January, the average drops to 1.0% excess deaths overall.

Re: Fine, I'll run a regression analysis but it won't make you happy

#24
post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apart from having taste or smell affected, I don't know anyone with "long COVID".

My brother has it. Persistently elevated heart rate and breathing issues, to the point that walking up a flight of stairs would leave him winded when he was suffering the worst. I believe he's gotten a bit better since, but not fully recovered. His resting heart rate is up 20bpm, and it can take 10-15 minutes after exerting himself for it to return to that new normal. He's almost certainly at risk for a stroke due to…

[dead]

Re: Fine, I'll run a regression analysis but it won't make you happy

#25
I really don't trust any of the numbers on covid. A vaccine for a dangerous illness that can affect billions of people is a very big payday. There's lots of money to spread around to politicians, corrupt scientists, and corrupt media.

I'd like to see a real scientific debate with adversarial inquiry so we could know if numbers are being fudged and which ones they are.

I trust science, but not greed driven capitalists corporations. Having a measure of distrust for pharmaceutical companies given their historical record is prudent.

Re: Fine, I'll run a regression analysis but it won't make you happy

#26
post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apart from having taste or smell affected, I don't know anyone with "long COVID".

I know a few people who are impacted by it. But they all, if I recall correctly, have confounding factors. For example, I know two people with MS where Covid has completely wrecked havoc -- and a year or so later are still largely devastated.

There's also the fact that for a lot of people, COVID isolation meant a precipitous decline in physical and social activity that lasted for years.

We know this stuff can fuck you up pretty bad both mentally and physically. Depressive symptoms and a steep decline in physical fitness is very much the expected outcome from that.

Re: Fine, I'll run a regression analysis but it won't make you happy

#27
post #2

This is all fine, but the focus on deaths is sort of missing the larger societal problem. The COVID devastation is also about long COVID, and even people who had COVID but either recovered “fully” or never displayed symptoms. None of this is over, and we are so, so fucked. edit: Which is to say: The Great Barrington Declaration was wrong directionally as well. We really needed to optimize to eliminate COVID as much a…

Eliminating Covid stopped being an option roughly around January 2020. The partial elimination you seem to be implying with "as much as possible" was never an option. It was always all or nothing.

Re: Fine, I'll run a regression analysis but it won't make you happy

#29

“Until vaccines became available, there was little difference in COVID death rates between blue states and red states. After vaccines became available, there were clear differences, with red states having higher death rates, almost certainly as a result of lower vaccine uptake among Republicans.” These are the claims he makes and arguably the data shows these to be true. The rest looks like whining where he objects t…

[deleted]

Re: Fine, I'll run a regression analysis but it won't make you happy

#30
post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You seem to have lived through a different pandemic than the rest of the world. It's hard to say the GBD was wrong when Sweden didn't lock down and they weren't exactly seeing bodies pile up in the street. Covid is now here to stay, ranking somewhere in severity between the common cold, flu or pneumonia.

> Covid is now here to stay, ranking somewhere in severity between the common cold, flu or pneumonia. I know it’s ideologically motivated, but it’s surprising people just bold-faced lie about the impact of COVID, when the stats are there for everyone to see. In the US, COVID is on track to kill ~200K people this year: https://covid.cdc.gov/covid-data-tracker The cold and flu will not kill anywhere near this number, p…

> COVID is on track to kill ~200K people this year

Where are you seeing this? I'm eyeballing cumulative deaths in the linked data tracker, it's about 50k through September 23.[1]

[1]: https://covid.cdc.gov/covid-data-tracker/#trends_totaldeaths...

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