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Maybe you should read the NYT article I sent. That is the death rate of Wuhan, where “care” meant being forcible quarantined on a stadium floor. 1.4% figure is

Maybe you should read the NYT article I sent. That is the death rate of Wuhan, where “care” meant being forcible quarantined on a stadium floor. 1.4% figure is the death rate with terrible care. Compare that to the non-corona USA death rate of of 0.8% In other words, even with terrible care the death rate of people with corona is only twice the death rate of people without corona. That’s not very alarming to me. And hardly worth these totalitarian economy stopping measures.

oaiey 7y ago
So we do not trust Italy either. Especially northern Italy where hospitals are on US/European level?
bobjob 7y ago
That is not true. People that needed intensive care got it. They build new medical centers for a reason. Not everything China does is bad, we simply don't understand the cultural reasons for the way they sometimes act because it is different!
endorphone 7y ago
This completely specious position is useful for all arguments! Gun deaths, drunk driving, terrorism, opioid deaths, suicides -- just compare them to the natural death rate and call it a day. I mean, those ones all pale compared to COVID-19, so apparently they're complete non-issues.
- randyrand 7y ago
  That’s not a terrible argument. But people are more upset about murder drunk driving, terrorism, opiod, and suicide than dying of disease because it’s human caused. It would make most sense to compare CoVID19 to deaths caused by disease per year in the USA, as that is apples to apples. I don’t have those numbers off hand. Edit: https://ourworldindata.org/causes-of-death https://ourworldindata.org/causes-of-death The overall rate is roughly the same as the death rate from disease.
  - scrollaway 7y ago
    As I said in a previous comment, this is your fallacy: 1. "New thing X puts us at risk of losing Y lives every day." 2. "We lose Y lives to car accidents every day". 3. "Ergo, X is harmless!" Except you now have 2Y lives lost every day.
    - randyrand 7y ago
      Thats not a fallacy. Thats exactly my point. It's not worth decimating human rights over 1 year of 2x the human death rate. If it were 4x, 5x sure, but 2x is not worthy of banning nearly all physical human interaction for many months or more.
      - scrollaway 7y ago
        I don't like being locked down at home any more than you do. But right now, my freedom to go out impedes on my neighbour's freedom not to get sick. COVID-19 has spread father than you think. It is also more damaging than you think. I'm hopeful the lockdowns won't be too long, and countries will gradually open up rather than all-at-once.
        SpicyLemonZest 7y ago
        I strongly suspect you do. Nearly 100% of the people I've seen argue in favor of indefinite lockdowns are white collar internet natives, capable of getting a reasonable amount of personal and professional satisfaction through a monitor. If you know anyone who works with their hands for a living, or whose primary social activity is having a beer with the bros, you understand why it's not as simple as just "it'll end when it ends".
        scrollaway 7y ago
        I don't know where you see me arguing in favour of indefinite lockdowns, and quite frankly, screw your shitty judgemental attitude. Not only am I low risk, but I've already had the virus and passed it nearly asymptomatically. I'm likely immune. This shit doesn't benefit me in any way. And while I may indeed, like most people on this site, make a living online; I've stopped working nearly entirely and have been donating my time to work on COVID-19 projects. In the mean time, I can't see my girlfriend, can't hang out with my local friends (sorry, "bros"), can't do my usual sports, and I still have to support the people in my life who have it much harder than me because they can't work. So no, I'm not in favour of indefinite lockdowns, but I'm also not in favour of ignoring the problem until it goes away on its own.
- SpicyLemonZest 7y ago
  But I think comparisons to the natural death rate are correct in all of those cases. If someone proposed to solve the issue of drunk driving by closing all bars and banning all social gatherings, our response would be a lot closer to "come on man" than a detailed cost-benefit analysis.
  - scrollaway 7y ago
    The death rates aren't the only thing that enter the equation, which is obvious if you think about it for a few seconds. Furthermore, and I can't believe I have to type this: Drunk driving isn't an airborne pathogen. You can't "catch" drunk driving after unknowingly breathing in alcohol fumes from someone in the subway, then suddenly, 10-14 days later, wake up in your car having an accident after having spread some more drunk driving to people you've been in proximity to. Why would it be "come on man!"? Because we have the ability to ban drunk drivers from the road, which we've done. We however don't have the ability to ban the coronavirus from our lungs, but I'm sure if we did have the ability to do that, we'd just do that instead of … you know, locking everything down. We're doing what we're doing because it's the only thing we can do. Some countries are trying other things. Some are better prepared than others and can afford to do less radical things. But what every country can pretty much (at this point) agree on is that, left completely unchecked, this will end us. Not just through the disease itself, but through the after-effects of the healthcare system collapsing.
    - SpicyLemonZest 7y ago
      I don't think every country can or has agreed on that. A lot of people argue that we shouldn't let the healthcare system collapse, that it's worth paying any cost no matter how large to prevent, but healthcare systems have collapsed in pandemics before and it's never been the end of the world. And to justify some of the proposals I've seen floating around, where we'll all be imprisoned at home for 3 or 6 or 18 months, "end of the world" is pretty much what you'd need to believe.
      - perl4ever 7y ago

oaiey 7y ago

So we do not trust Italy either. Especially northern Italy where hospitals are on US/European level?

bobjob 7y ago

That is not true. People that needed intensive care got it. They build new medical centers for a reason. Not everything China does is bad, we simply don't understand the cultural reasons for the way they sometimes act because it is different!

endorphone 7y ago

This completely specious position is useful for all arguments! Gun deaths, drunk driving, terrorism, opioid deaths, suicides -- just compare them to the natural death rate and call it a day. I mean, those ones all pale compared to COVID-19, so apparently they're complete non-issues.

randyrand 7y ago
That’s not a terrible argument. But people are more upset about murder drunk driving, terrorism, opiod, and suicide than dying of disease because it’s human caused. It would make most sense to compare CoVID19 to deaths caused by disease per year in the USA, as that is apples to apples. I don’t have those numbers off hand. Edit: https://ourworldindata.org/causes-of-death https://ourworldindata.org/causes-of-death The overall rate is roughly the same as the death rate from disease.
- scrollaway 7y ago
  As I said in a previous comment, this is your fallacy: 1. "New thing X puts us at risk of losing Y lives every day." 2. "We lose Y lives to car accidents every day". 3. "Ergo, X is harmless!" Except you now have 2Y lives lost every day.
  - randyrand 7y ago
    Thats not a fallacy. Thats exactly my point. It's not worth decimating human rights over 1 year of 2x the human death rate. If it were 4x, 5x sure, but 2x is not worthy of banning nearly all physical human interaction for many months or more.
    - scrollaway 7y ago
      I don't like being locked down at home any more than you do. But right now, my freedom to go out impedes on my neighbour's freedom not to get sick. COVID-19 has spread father than you think. It is also more damaging than you think. I'm hopeful the lockdowns won't be too long, and countries will gradually open up rather than all-at-once.
      - SpicyLemonZest 7y ago
        I strongly suspect you do. Nearly 100% of the people I've seen argue in favor of indefinite lockdowns are white collar internet natives, capable of getting a reasonable amount of personal and professional satisfaction through a monitor. If you know anyone who works with their hands for a living, or whose primary social activity is having a beer with the bros, you understand why it's not as simple as just "it'll end when it ends".
        scrollaway 7y ago
        I don't know where you see me arguing in favour of indefinite lockdowns, and quite frankly, screw your shitty judgemental attitude. Not only am I low risk, but I've already had the virus and passed it nearly asymptomatically. I'm likely immune. This shit doesn't benefit me in any way. And while I may indeed, like most people on this site, make a living online; I've stopped working nearly entirely and have been donating my time to work on COVID-19 projects. In the mean time, I can't see my girlfriend, can't hang out with my local friends (sorry, "bros"), can't do my usual sports, and I still have to support the people in my life who have it much harder than me because they can't work. So no, I'm not in favour of indefinite lockdowns, but I'm also not in favour of ignoring the problem until it goes away on its own.
SpicyLemonZest 7y ago
But I think comparisons to the natural death rate are correct in all of those cases. If someone proposed to solve the issue of drunk driving by closing all bars and banning all social gatherings, our response would be a lot closer to "come on man" than a detailed cost-benefit analysis.
- scrollaway 7y ago
  The death rates aren't the only thing that enter the equation, which is obvious if you think about it for a few seconds. Furthermore, and I can't believe I have to type this: Drunk driving isn't an airborne pathogen. You can't "catch" drunk driving after unknowingly breathing in alcohol fumes from someone in the subway, then suddenly, 10-14 days later, wake up in your car having an accident after having spread some more drunk driving to people you've been in proximity to. Why would it be "come on man!"? Because we have the ability to ban drunk drivers from the road, which we've done. We however don't have the ability to ban the coronavirus from our lungs, but I'm sure if we did have the ability to do that, we'd just do that instead of … you know, locking everything down. We're doing what we're doing because it's the only thing we can do. Some countries are trying other things. Some are better prepared than others and can afford to do less radical things. But what every country can pretty much (at this point) agree on is that, left completely unchecked, this will end us. Not just through the disease itself, but through the after-effects of the healthcare system collapsing.
  - SpicyLemonZest 7y ago
    I don't think every country can or has agreed on that. A lot of people argue that we shouldn't let the healthcare system collapse, that it's worth paying any cost no matter how large to prevent, but healthcare systems have collapsed in pandemics before and it's never been the end of the world. And to justify some of the proposals I've seen floating around, where we'll all be imprisoned at home for 3 or 6 or 18 months, "end of the world" is pretty much what you'd need to believe.
    - perl4ever 7y ago