4 ms·

How many of those people who died from cancer and heart diseased are aged 18-45? These numbers are largely irrelevant if we dont compare them apples-to-apples w

How many of those people who died from cancer and heart diseased are aged 18-45? These numbers are largely irrelevant if we dont compare them apples-to-apples with the numbers in their proper cohort. In any case, these tactics, namely cherry-picking, callousness towards human life, and flippant dismissal of the points of others, make it very hard to have a discussion here. It does not seem like the posts are being made to debate but instead pummel into submission. Finally, there have been over 100,000 Covid-19 deaths in the US. Each one of them a human who could have not died from Covid-19.

redis_mlc 6y ago
You are confusing empathy with US public healthcare policy. The first considers populations of individuals, the latter 300 million. And no, I'm not here to debate. I'm here to reinforce the message that policy needs to be considered at the national level, not the individual level. I can see from the hundreds of downvotes I've received in the past two months that very few people are considering the larger picture for society. I call that selfish. I seldom refer to IFR and CFR because the testing data is unreliable, so I use mortality numbers. If you feel that you're good with statistics and have accurate enough US data, please do some analysis and let people know. (I actually wasn't cherry-picking, but a more complete analysis should include mortality by age range.) For the record, I have no preference for the Democratic or Republican parties, and would like to see corona policy depoliticized. Mixing corona policy with the upcoming elections will not turn out well.
- wsatb 6y ago
  > I can see from the hundreds of downvotes I've received in the past two months that very few people are considering the larger picture for society. I call that selfish. This is quite the accusation. I think everyone is well aware of the long term impact of this lockdown, but when you start thinking of that 21k as real people: your brother, your sister, your niece, or your nephew, your best friend, shit gets real fast. If it's selfish to not want my loved ones to die because our economy and healthcare system is so woefully flawed and unprepared, then I guess I'm selfish. Maybe we'll learn something this time, but probably not.
  - hedora 6y ago
    The WHO is predicting 1 billion people will starve this year. Over 800 million of that is attributed to the COVID response. If you divide out the numbers, for each person the global lockdown saves from COVID, it will starve 100. I’m not the sort willing to torture a hundred innocent strangers (and kill dozens) to save one of my loved ones. Either people are not “well aware” of the impacts of the shutdown, or we have radically different ethical standards.
    - s1artibartfast 6y ago
      >the WHO is predicting 1 billion people will starve this year This simply isn't true and it undermines your argument. The UN and WHO estimate that the virus will push an additional 100-250 million people into an at risk category of starvation. This category already has ~850 million people in it every year, of which 3-5 million actually starve. This is horrific, and there is no need to exaggerate. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Starvation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Starvation
  - shadowprofile77 6y ago
    Yes you are selfish, and admittedly emotionally irrational as well. If your only criterion is that you do not want your loved ones to die because something else that affects millions and is in fact necessary for millions of others to continue living decently goes on, then you're implicitly stating that a vast number of sometimes risky things should stop because there is a non-zero (and in many cases of things commonly done) higher-than-covid-death possibility that one of these things will kill some loved one of yours. Now you're welcome to your personal, selfish and emotionally charged view of course but public policy and rules that affect billions of human beings cannot be decided on the slimmest margins of possibility that someone somebody else loves will die. Doing so will in any case indirectly or directly cause somebody else that someone else loves to die. The global economic depression we seem to have unleashed at this point will also very, very likely cause misery and death for hundreds of thousands if not millions of other people who are the loved ones of someone who does not want them to die. Now, the lockdowns that have been the case so far were in large part based on what are looking more like over-inflated initial estimates of mortality for the virus, so based on precaution derived from these initial estimates, it was understandable that they were implemented even if they had their own risks, but now if the mortality rate of the virus is indeed much lower than previously expected, it's only irresponsible to continue with lockdown measures that cause tremendous harm of their own for many reasons. Least of all should they be continued because there's always a handful of people like you who say "But my loved ones, I don't care about anything else no matter how minor the risk to these people I know"..
hedora 6y ago
> These numbers are largely irrelevant if we dont compare them apples-to-apples with the numbers in their proper cohort. Within age cohorts, COVID’s death rate is approximately the same as the chance of dying from other causes in the next 12 months. Put another way, you should be less worried about COVID than you are about dying of something else before Jun 2021.
- bennyelv 6y ago
  It’s not clear from your description really - Doesn’t that mean your chance of dying has doubled? Is that not significant?

redis_mlc 6y ago

You are confusing empathy with US public healthcare policy. The first considers populations of individuals, the latter 300 million. And no, I'm not here to debate. I'm here to reinforce the message that policy needs to be considered at the national level, not the individual level. I can see from the hundreds of downvotes I've received in the past two months that very few people are considering the larger picture for society. I call that selfish. I seldom refer to IFR and CFR because the testing data is unreliable, so I use mortality numbers. If you feel that you're good with statistics and have accurate enough US data, please do some analysis and let people know. (I actually wasn't cherry-picking, but a more complete analysis should include mortality by age range.) For the record, I have no preference for the Democratic or Republican parties, and would like to see corona policy depoliticized. Mixing corona policy with the upcoming elections will not turn out well.

wsatb 6y ago
> I can see from the hundreds of downvotes I've received in the past two months that very few people are considering the larger picture for society. I call that selfish. This is quite the accusation. I think everyone is well aware of the long term impact of this lockdown, but when you start thinking of that 21k as real people: your brother, your sister, your niece, or your nephew, your best friend, shit gets real fast. If it's selfish to not want my loved ones to die because our economy and healthcare system is so woefully flawed and unprepared, then I guess I'm selfish. Maybe we'll learn something this time, but probably not.
- hedora 6y ago
  The WHO is predicting 1 billion people will starve this year. Over 800 million of that is attributed to the COVID response. If you divide out the numbers, for each person the global lockdown saves from COVID, it will starve 100. I’m not the sort willing to torture a hundred innocent strangers (and kill dozens) to save one of my loved ones. Either people are not “well aware” of the impacts of the shutdown, or we have radically different ethical standards.
  - s1artibartfast 6y ago
    >the WHO is predicting 1 billion people will starve this year This simply isn't true and it undermines your argument. The UN and WHO estimate that the virus will push an additional 100-250 million people into an at risk category of starvation. This category already has ~850 million people in it every year, of which 3-5 million actually starve. This is horrific, and there is no need to exaggerate. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Starvation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Starvation
- shadowprofile77 6y ago
  Yes you are selfish, and admittedly emotionally irrational as well. If your only criterion is that you do not want your loved ones to die because something else that affects millions and is in fact necessary for millions of others to continue living decently goes on, then you're implicitly stating that a vast number of sometimes risky things should stop because there is a non-zero (and in many cases of things commonly done) higher-than-covid-death possibility that one of these things will kill some loved one of yours. Now you're welcome to your personal, selfish and emotionally charged view of course but public policy and rules that affect billions of human beings cannot be decided on the slimmest margins of possibility that someone somebody else loves will die. Doing so will in any case indirectly or directly cause somebody else that someone else loves to die. The global economic depression we seem to have unleashed at this point will also very, very likely cause misery and death for hundreds of thousands if not millions of other people who are the loved ones of someone who does not want them to die. Now, the lockdowns that have been the case so far were in large part based on what are looking more like over-inflated initial estimates of mortality for the virus, so based on precaution derived from these initial estimates, it was understandable that they were implemented even if they had their own risks, but now if the mortality rate of the virus is indeed much lower than previously expected, it's only irresponsible to continue with lockdown measures that cause tremendous harm of their own for many reasons. Least of all should they be continued because there's always a handful of people like you who say "But my loved ones, I don't care about anything else no matter how minor the risk to these people I know"..

hedora 6y ago

> These numbers are largely irrelevant if we dont compare them apples-to-apples with the numbers in their proper cohort. Within age cohorts, COVID’s death rate is approximately the same as the chance of dying from other causes in the next 12 months. Put another way, you should be less worried about COVID than you are about dying of something else before Jun 2021.

bennyelv 6y ago
It’s not clear from your description really - Doesn’t that mean your chance of dying has doubled? Is that not significant?