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As of this moment America has a little less than 17,000 dead from this. We could’ve used more competence and seriousness about this threat for the sake of ever

As of this moment America has a little less than 17,000 dead from this. We could’ve used more competence and seriousness about this threat for the sake of everyone, not petty indulgences of performative outrage about a concept of freedom that feels hollow as we all are forced to hide.

whb07 7y ago
And in that time span about the same people died from the "regular" flu. Speak for yourself, the "concept of freedom" that you talk about is one of the many reasons the U.S is what it is. The freedoms we have do have costs at times like these but the benefits vastly outweigh the costs.
- ceejayoz 7y ago
  “It only killed as many as the flu” is a weird talking point. It killed that many with an unprecedented shutdown of the entire global economy to mitigate it.
  - scottlocklin 7y ago
    Do you think the flu doesn't respond to the measures taken against corona-chan?
    - ceejayoz 7y ago
      The point: Comparing annual flu deaths when we don't shut down the whole world to COVID-19 deaths when we do (especially to make the claim they're similarly dangerous) is insane. If 100 people drown in lakes, that's not really odd. If 100 people drown in the middle of the Sahara a thousand miles from the nearest water, that's weird.
      - scottlocklin 7y ago
        Looked to me like he was comparing flu deaths now to corona deaths now. If indeed those numbers are comparable or the same, we've probably made a terrible mistake. Maybe looking at total pneumonia deaths for anomalies is the right thing to do?
        ceejayoz 7y ago
        > If indeed those numbers are comparable or the same, we've probably made a terrible mistake. No, probably not. The seasonal flu infects a billion people a year, and still doesn't do things like collapse Italy's healthcare system.
        scottlocklin 7y ago
        You're changing the subject: if indeed the number of deaths from flu and covid are the same, during a quarantine, we have made a terrible mistake. I have no idea if they are the same. Do you?
        ceejayoz 7y ago
        You need to reconcile the "no worse than the flu" idea with "collapsed the northern Italian healthcare system". If you're proposing they're similar in impact, you need to explain why their actual real-life impact is not similar. The CDC estimates somewhere between 24k and 63k flu deaths since October. https://www.cdc.gov/flu/about/burden/preliminary-in-season-estimates.htm https://www.cdc.gov/flu/about/burden/preliminary-in-season-e... The previous season was estimated at 34,200. https://www.cdc.gov/flu/about/burden/2018-2019.html https://www.cdc.gov/flu/about/burden/2018-2019.html COVID-19 has killed at least 16k in the US, starting on Feb 29, with significant mitigation efforts that are not done for flu. Almost all of that is in the last week - the death toll stood at only 1.8k on 4/4. https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nvss/vsrr/COVID19/index.htm https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nvss/vsrr/COVID19/index.htm Comparing the two is like claiming a bicycle is winning a 10 mile race versus a Ferrari because it got a head start and got to mile #1 faster. (It's also likely some estimated flu deaths are actually COVID deaths.)
    - ModernMech 7y ago
      Surely it does, but the CDC estimates that there have been 24k-64k deaths so far this season from flu [1]. That's over a 5 month span so that averages 4.8k - 12.6k deaths per month. Lockdowns really only started going into effect in that last month of the 5, so most of this time the flu was running around unmitigated by social distancing. Now compare to coronavirus, where we were late to start but eventually locked everything down, and we still have 17k deaths in less than a month, and we know that's a lower bound. We're not even a month past the first 100 deaths. The death rate now represents infections 2 weeks ago, which we measured at 14k. After that we started measuring 30k+ new infections daily, so the death rate is likely to get worse by the time we hit 1 month. [1] https://www.cdc.gov/flu/about/burden/preliminary-in-season-estimates.htm https://www.cdc.gov/flu/about/burden/preliminary-in-season-e...
  - whb07 7y ago
    Yeah....no. Funny how this line of thinking goes. Serological studies starting to come out and they are showing rates above 25% of the population being infected. Study out of Germany reports that CFR is 0.3%. Theres a news article out of Chicago where the drive thru testing reported more people had the antibodies than tested positive.
    - umanwizard 7y ago
      Got a link?
      - ModernMech 7y ago
        Probably this? https://www.technologyreview.com/2020/04/09/999015/blood-tests-show-15-of-people-are-now-immune-to-covid-19-in-one-town-in-germany/ https://www.technologyreview.com/2020/04/09/999015/blood-tes...
- dragonwriter 7y ago
  > And in that time span about the same people died from the "regular" flu. We're past the seasonal flu peak and coronavirus is still on the upswing and hasn't peaked, it's not only killing more people per day than the flu, but it's actually now reached the status of leading cause of death in the US.[0] Even with countermeasures, covid-19 is, short of a literal miracle, going to kill far more people in the US than the flu this year. And it's also going already contributing more to deaths by other direct causes by clogging hospital systems, consuming resources like ventilators, etc. [0] https://www.msn.com/en-us/health/health-news/coronavirus-becomes-leading-cause-of-death-in-us/ar-BB12o7aQ?li=BBnb7Kz https://www.msn.com/en-us/health/health-news/coronavirus-bec...
whatshisface 7y ago
You know, if the condition for giving up your rights is "the government says they have a good reason," then you never really had any rights at all. We're all smart, maybe there's a way to solve this without eliminating civil liberties - a way that we'll never discover if at the first sign of danger we yell "take our rights, oh wise rulers!" to the politicians who, of course, are willing to take them.
- EarthIsHome 7y ago
  What civil liberties are you afraid of eliminating in a crisis like this?
  - amiga 7y ago
    Those willing to trade liberty for security deserve neither.
    - krapp 7y ago
      >Those willing to trade liberty for security deserve neither. That's a thought terminating cliche, not a response, as well as a complete misinterpretation of Ben Franklin's intent[0], thus not even a valid argument from authority. [0]https://www.npr.org/2015/03/02/390245038/ben-franklins-famous-liberty-safety-quote-lost-its-context-in-21st-century https://www.npr.org/2015/03/02/390245038/ben-franklins-famou...
  - koolba 7y ago
    Both the right of assembly and the right to bear arms have been repeatedly infringed. For example in CA: https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2020-03-24/l-a-county-sheriff-gun-stores-owners-must-close-or-face-citations-amid-coronavirus-restrictions https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2020-03-24/l-a-coun...
    - deleted 7y ago
      [deleted]
    - 7y ago

whb07 7y ago

And in that time span about the same people died from the "regular" flu. Speak for yourself, the "concept of freedom" that you talk about is one of the many reasons the U.S is what it is. The freedoms we have do have costs at times like these but the benefits vastly outweigh the costs.

ceejayoz 7y ago
“It only killed as many as the flu” is a weird talking point. It killed that many with an unprecedented shutdown of the entire global economy to mitigate it.
- scottlocklin 7y ago
  Do you think the flu doesn't respond to the measures taken against corona-chan?
  - ceejayoz 7y ago
    The point: Comparing annual flu deaths when we don't shut down the whole world to COVID-19 deaths when we do (especially to make the claim they're similarly dangerous) is insane. If 100 people drown in lakes, that's not really odd. If 100 people drown in the middle of the Sahara a thousand miles from the nearest water, that's weird.
    - scottlocklin 7y ago
      Looked to me like he was comparing flu deaths now to corona deaths now. If indeed those numbers are comparable or the same, we've probably made a terrible mistake. Maybe looking at total pneumonia deaths for anomalies is the right thing to do?
      - ceejayoz 7y ago
        > If indeed those numbers are comparable or the same, we've probably made a terrible mistake. No, probably not. The seasonal flu infects a billion people a year, and still doesn't do things like collapse Italy's healthcare system.
        scottlocklin 7y ago
        You're changing the subject: if indeed the number of deaths from flu and covid are the same, during a quarantine, we have made a terrible mistake. I have no idea if they are the same. Do you?
        ceejayoz 7y ago
        You need to reconcile the "no worse than the flu" idea with "collapsed the northern Italian healthcare system". If you're proposing they're similar in impact, you need to explain why their actual real-life impact is not similar. The CDC estimates somewhere between 24k and 63k flu deaths since October. https://www.cdc.gov/flu/about/burden/preliminary-in-season-estimates.htm https://www.cdc.gov/flu/about/burden/preliminary-in-season-e... The previous season was estimated at 34,200. https://www.cdc.gov/flu/about/burden/2018-2019.html https://www.cdc.gov/flu/about/burden/2018-2019.html COVID-19 has killed at least 16k in the US, starting on Feb 29, with significant mitigation efforts that are not done for flu. Almost all of that is in the last week - the death toll stood at only 1.8k on 4/4. https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nvss/vsrr/COVID19/index.htm https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nvss/vsrr/COVID19/index.htm Comparing the two is like claiming a bicycle is winning a 10 mile race versus a Ferrari because it got a head start and got to mile #1 faster. (It's also likely some estimated flu deaths are actually COVID deaths.)
  - ModernMech 7y ago
    Surely it does, but the CDC estimates that there have been 24k-64k deaths so far this season from flu [1]. That's over a 5 month span so that averages 4.8k - 12.6k deaths per month. Lockdowns really only started going into effect in that last month of the 5, so most of this time the flu was running around unmitigated by social distancing. Now compare to coronavirus, where we were late to start but eventually locked everything down, and we still have 17k deaths in less than a month, and we know that's a lower bound. We're not even a month past the first 100 deaths. The death rate now represents infections 2 weeks ago, which we measured at 14k. After that we started measuring 30k+ new infections daily, so the death rate is likely to get worse by the time we hit 1 month. [1] https://www.cdc.gov/flu/about/burden/preliminary-in-season-estimates.htm https://www.cdc.gov/flu/about/burden/preliminary-in-season-e...
- whb07 7y ago
  Yeah....no. Funny how this line of thinking goes. Serological studies starting to come out and they are showing rates above 25% of the population being infected. Study out of Germany reports that CFR is 0.3%. Theres a news article out of Chicago where the drive thru testing reported more people had the antibodies than tested positive.
  - umanwizard 7y ago
    Got a link?
    - ModernMech 7y ago
      Probably this? https://www.technologyreview.com/2020/04/09/999015/blood-tests-show-15-of-people-are-now-immune-to-covid-19-in-one-town-in-germany/ https://www.technologyreview.com/2020/04/09/999015/blood-tes...
dragonwriter 7y ago
> And in that time span about the same people died from the "regular" flu. We're past the seasonal flu peak and coronavirus is still on the upswing and hasn't peaked, it's not only killing more people per day than the flu, but it's actually now reached the status of leading cause of death in the US.[0] Even with countermeasures, covid-19 is, short of a literal miracle, going to kill far more people in the US than the flu this year. And it's also going already contributing more to deaths by other direct causes by clogging hospital systems, consuming resources like ventilators, etc. [0] https://www.msn.com/en-us/health/health-news/coronavirus-becomes-leading-cause-of-death-in-us/ar-BB12o7aQ?li=BBnb7Kz https://www.msn.com/en-us/health/health-news/coronavirus-bec...

whatshisface 7y ago

You know, if the condition for giving up your rights is "the government says they have a good reason," then you never really had any rights at all. We're all smart, maybe there's a way to solve this without eliminating civil liberties - a way that we'll never discover if at the first sign of danger we yell "take our rights, oh wise rulers!" to the politicians who, of course, are willing to take them.

EarthIsHome 7y ago
What civil liberties are you afraid of eliminating in a crisis like this?
- amiga 7y ago
  Those willing to trade liberty for security deserve neither.
  - krapp 7y ago
    >Those willing to trade liberty for security deserve neither. That's a thought terminating cliche, not a response, as well as a complete misinterpretation of Ben Franklin's intent[0], thus not even a valid argument from authority. [0]https://www.npr.org/2015/03/02/390245038/ben-franklins-famous-liberty-safety-quote-lost-its-context-in-21st-century https://www.npr.org/2015/03/02/390245038/ben-franklins-famou...
- koolba 7y ago
  Both the right of assembly and the right to bear arms have been repeatedly infringed. For example in CA: https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2020-03-24/l-a-county-sheriff-gun-stores-owners-must-close-or-face-citations-amid-coronavirus-restrictions https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2020-03-24/l-a-coun...
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
  - 7y ago