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There are a minimal number of excess deaths now associated with COVID, so what is the problem? Allowing the community to acquire immunity naturally during Summe

There are a minimal number of excess deaths now associated with COVID, so what is the problem? Allowing the community to acquire immunity naturally during Summer is a good way to minimise the spread of the virus come Winter. COVID severity seems heavily linked with Vitamin D levels, so lockdown during Summer would possibly have been counter-productive for the general population. https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nvss/vsrr/covid19/excess_deaths.htm https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nvss/vsrr/covid19/excess_deaths.htm Why should Governments force people into lockdown for a virus with a CFR of 0.26%, marginally more deadly than the Flu at 0.1%? In particular, COVID deaths are concentrated at those aged 70+ with existing health conditions, so broad-scale lockdown and enforced mask wearing doesn't make sense - when targeted support for the elderly and vulnerable would be effective and less disruptive.

dvdkhlng 6y ago
Looking at the "Weekly number of deaths" plot in the page you linked, I think what it says is, that the number of all-cause /excess/ deaths throughout april and may is more than 100 thousand people. This is without looking at the actual cause of death, but given the corona situation and lack of other factors explaining such an unusual rise in mortality, I'd assume that most of those excess deaths are in fact somehow related to COVID. Note also that the same mortality "signal" is much stronger in highly populated areas, e.g. New York City [1] and I don't see how this can be explained away as a "minimal number of excess deaths" or something "marginally more deadly" than the Flu. [1] https://public.tableau.com/profile/dataviz8737#!/vizhome/shared/P2PJTPX2D https://public.tableau.com/profile/dataviz8737#!/vizhome/sha...
OminousWeapons 6y ago
Regardless of your view on the necessity of mask wearing or lockdowns, the CDC should be releasing accurate information about the efficacy of treatments and prophylaxis, period. It is absolutely unacceptable to be lying to the public because it is politically convenient or because the government wants to steer the public in a certain direction. Whether masks fundamentally work or not has nothing to do with how many masks we happen to have at hand.
darkerside 6y ago
In a theoretical world this makes a ton of sense. In a world where people grow accustomed to life as usual, fail to make adjustments BEFORE flu season, and we end up with the virus having a kick-started boost to start flu season, we're heading full speed into a brick wall. If we can slow down beforehand, yes, we probably make beneficial progress towards herd immunity (albeit minimal). But in a leadership vacuum with an election ahead, this doesn't look good to me.
tsimionescu 6y ago
> There are a minimal number of excess deaths now associated with COVID, so what is the problem? I don't usually use such language on HN, but this is absolutely delusional. Covid19 has killed more people in 6 months, with lockdowns, than Malaria did all of last year. More than a third of those deaths are in the US. How can you possibly in good conscience claim this is even remotely comparable to the Flu?
- nate_meurer 6y ago
  You're using ambiguous language, and you didn't at all refute the parent's argument. If sars-cov-2 actually turns out to have overall IFR of around a quarter of a percent, then it most certainly is comparable to seasonal flu. I personally think that's unlikely, as most reputable estimates have continued to converge on the 0.5-1% range. But even that is "comparable" in the true sense of the word, in that reasonable and fruitful comparisons can be made between the two. Which is exactly what epidemiologists do for a living. I rather think it's your comparison that's delusional. Two-thirds of of the people killed by malaria are children. Millions more children are afflicted with symptoms severe enough to lead to long-term health problems. Malaria literally robs countries of their future. And malaria's transmission is a much harder problem to solve, because we're fighting a resilient, ubiquitous, nearly invisible vector that can spread the disease miles from the nearest infected person. To be sure sars-cov-2 is worser and scarier than seasonal flu in every way, but the hysteria isn't helpful. You didn't even bother to try to refute the parent's assertion that more limited but better targeted restriction might work just as well with less economic damage. This is an area of active, legitimate debate.
  - tsimionescu 6y ago
    The IFR for Covid-19 is still not known, but just based on deaths, it is obviously either much more virulent or much more deadly than a seasonal flu. There is no way to look at ~127k deaths in the US for half a year, with no sign of slowing down in summer, and say that it is similar to the flu (which killed ~34k people last year in the US). The comparison to malaria is also interesting. You're absolutely right that the infection vector is completely different in almost all characteristics. The difference between a disease killing mostly children and a disease killing mostly old people is important, but I don't think "robbing a country of its future" is a meaningful way to look at it. For example, there are no demographic risks from malaria, like your metaphor would seem to imply. The majority of the economic impact is coming either from households having to pay for the care of their sick family, or from lost work due to the sickness. The long-term impairments that malaria may leave children with are also a factor. Of these, the first and possibly the third apply to COVID-19 as well, except that the costs for COVID-19 care are much higher, and with the important caveat that we don't know the long-term impacts of COVID-19 (though it is very likely not to affect children significantly, fortunately). And while malaria can be eradicated (with great effort and time), as has been done in the southern US and southern Europe at least, it remains much more likely that COVID-19 will remain an endemic burden that we will just live and die with. I don't think we have any examples of successfully eliminating a human-to-human transmitted respiratory disease, unless we get lucky with a vaccine. It may well end up as a new tuberculosis. And the assertion that limited restrictions could work as well as lockdowns is an extraordinary claim without any form of evidence. The only countries that successfully stopped the disease used some combination of timely lockdowns, travel restrictions, ubiquitous mask wearing, large scale testing, and excellent universal healthcare. Limited protections for the elderly have not been shown to work anywhere in the world, so why bother discussing them? Note: in the spirit of nitpicking about my use of "not comparable" when I meant "much worse than", I should also point out that SARS-CoV-2 is a virus, so it is literally not comparable to the Flu, which is a disease. You can compare SARS-CoV-2 with (one of) the Influenza virus(es), or compare COVID-19 with the Flu/Influenza.
csours 6y ago
Would you write this if your family was personally affected by a Covid death? To directly answer your question, there are 3 reason to take Covid very seriously: 1. Saturation of healthcare resources. People who get sick with Covid are more likely to use hospital beds and resources, and for longer as well. 2. It is deadlier than other diseases such as the flu. 3. It is more contagious than the flu.
bobbydroptables 6y ago
We don't fully understand the long term effects. Many people are experiencing prolonged sickness that may never go away. The disease can do permanent damage to basically any of your organs. Seems crazy to adopt a policy of infecting the world with a dangerous disease that we don't really understand. https://globalnews.ca/news/7111094/coronavirus-scientists-health-problems/ https://globalnews.ca/news/7111094/coronavirus-scientists-he...
TomSwirly 6y ago
Most of the rest of the world made at least some attempt to fight the virus. For them, the peak was weeks ago. The first COVID-19 case in the US was in January. The US government has failed to mount any sort of coherent response. Now 130,000 are dead, mostly avoidably. https://www.statnews.com/2020/06/19/faster-response-prevented-most-us-covid-19-deaths/ https://www.statnews.com/2020/06/19/faster-response-prevente... The virus is growing unchecked in 44 states. Yesterday, Florida reported a record 9,585 new cases. It's not even 3PM in Florida and they have already reported a record 10,682 new cases today. This terrible disregard for science is going to kill hundreds of thousands of Americans unnecessarily. Please reconsider your stance.
ericb 6y ago
> Why should Governments force people into lockdown for a virus with a CFR of 0.26% Do you have a source for that--not something like "The Dental Tribune," but a link to the CDC page, or scientific study. I haven't seen anything in studies below 0.4%. You're leaving out long term consequences in your calculation, which we're seeing but haven't quantified yet. You're also leaving out the explosive speed of spread, which can overwhelm ICUs. Mask wearing is cheap and easy and seems to be associated with a region bringing it under control, so perhaps you can make your case about lock down, but the "open up without masks" seems foolhardy given those other facts.

dvdkhlng 6y ago

Looking at the "Weekly number of deaths" plot in the page you linked, I think what it says is, that the number of all-cause /excess/ deaths throughout april and may is more than 100 thousand people. This is without looking at the actual cause of death, but given the corona situation and lack of other factors explaining such an unusual rise in mortality, I'd assume that most of those excess deaths are in fact somehow related to COVID. Note also that the same mortality "signal" is much stronger in highly populated areas, e.g. New York City [1] and I don't see how this can be explained away as a "minimal number of excess deaths" or something "marginally more deadly" than the Flu. [1] https://public.tableau.com/profile/dataviz8737#!/vizhome/shared/P2PJTPX2D https://public.tableau.com/profile/dataviz8737#!/vizhome/sha...

OminousWeapons 6y ago

Regardless of your view on the necessity of mask wearing or lockdowns, the CDC should be releasing accurate information about the efficacy of treatments and prophylaxis, period. It is absolutely unacceptable to be lying to the public because it is politically convenient or because the government wants to steer the public in a certain direction. Whether masks fundamentally work or not has nothing to do with how many masks we happen to have at hand.

darkerside 6y ago

In a theoretical world this makes a ton of sense. In a world where people grow accustomed to life as usual, fail to make adjustments BEFORE flu season, and we end up with the virus having a kick-started boost to start flu season, we're heading full speed into a brick wall. If we can slow down beforehand, yes, we probably make beneficial progress towards herd immunity (albeit minimal). But in a leadership vacuum with an election ahead, this doesn't look good to me.

tsimionescu 6y ago

> There are a minimal number of excess deaths now associated with COVID, so what is the problem? I don't usually use such language on HN, but this is absolutely delusional. Covid19 has killed more people in 6 months, with lockdowns, than Malaria did all of last year. More than a third of those deaths are in the US. How can you possibly in good conscience claim this is even remotely comparable to the Flu?

nate_meurer 6y ago
You're using ambiguous language, and you didn't at all refute the parent's argument. If sars-cov-2 actually turns out to have overall IFR of around a quarter of a percent, then it most certainly is comparable to seasonal flu. I personally think that's unlikely, as most reputable estimates have continued to converge on the 0.5-1% range. But even that is "comparable" in the true sense of the word, in that reasonable and fruitful comparisons can be made between the two. Which is exactly what epidemiologists do for a living. I rather think it's your comparison that's delusional. Two-thirds of of the people killed by malaria are children. Millions more children are afflicted with symptoms severe enough to lead to long-term health problems. Malaria literally robs countries of their future. And malaria's transmission is a much harder problem to solve, because we're fighting a resilient, ubiquitous, nearly invisible vector that can spread the disease miles from the nearest infected person. To be sure sars-cov-2 is worser and scarier than seasonal flu in every way, but the hysteria isn't helpful. You didn't even bother to try to refute the parent's assertion that more limited but better targeted restriction might work just as well with less economic damage. This is an area of active, legitimate debate.
- tsimionescu 6y ago
  The IFR for Covid-19 is still not known, but just based on deaths, it is obviously either much more virulent or much more deadly than a seasonal flu. There is no way to look at ~127k deaths in the US for half a year, with no sign of slowing down in summer, and say that it is similar to the flu (which killed ~34k people last year in the US). The comparison to malaria is also interesting. You're absolutely right that the infection vector is completely different in almost all characteristics. The difference between a disease killing mostly children and a disease killing mostly old people is important, but I don't think "robbing a country of its future" is a meaningful way to look at it. For example, there are no demographic risks from malaria, like your metaphor would seem to imply. The majority of the economic impact is coming either from households having to pay for the care of their sick family, or from lost work due to the sickness. The long-term impairments that malaria may leave children with are also a factor. Of these, the first and possibly the third apply to COVID-19 as well, except that the costs for COVID-19 care are much higher, and with the important caveat that we don't know the long-term impacts of COVID-19 (though it is very likely not to affect children significantly, fortunately). And while malaria can be eradicated (with great effort and time), as has been done in the southern US and southern Europe at least, it remains much more likely that COVID-19 will remain an endemic burden that we will just live and die with. I don't think we have any examples of successfully eliminating a human-to-human transmitted respiratory disease, unless we get lucky with a vaccine. It may well end up as a new tuberculosis. And the assertion that limited restrictions could work as well as lockdowns is an extraordinary claim without any form of evidence. The only countries that successfully stopped the disease used some combination of timely lockdowns, travel restrictions, ubiquitous mask wearing, large scale testing, and excellent universal healthcare. Limited protections for the elderly have not been shown to work anywhere in the world, so why bother discussing them? Note: in the spirit of nitpicking about my use of "not comparable" when I meant "much worse than", I should also point out that SARS-CoV-2 is a virus, so it is literally not comparable to the Flu, which is a disease. You can compare SARS-CoV-2 with (one of) the Influenza virus(es), or compare COVID-19 with the Flu/Influenza.

csours 6y ago

Would you write this if your family was personally affected by a Covid death? To directly answer your question, there are 3 reason to take Covid very seriously: 1. Saturation of healthcare resources. People who get sick with Covid are more likely to use hospital beds and resources, and for longer as well. 2. It is deadlier than other diseases such as the flu. 3. It is more contagious than the flu.

bobbydroptables 6y ago

We don't fully understand the long term effects. Many people are experiencing prolonged sickness that may never go away. The disease can do permanent damage to basically any of your organs. Seems crazy to adopt a policy of infecting the world with a dangerous disease that we don't really understand. https://globalnews.ca/news/7111094/coronavirus-scientists-health-problems/ https://globalnews.ca/news/7111094/coronavirus-scientists-he...

TomSwirly 6y ago

Most of the rest of the world made at least some attempt to fight the virus. For them, the peak was weeks ago. The first COVID-19 case in the US was in January. The US government has failed to mount any sort of coherent response. Now 130,000 are dead, mostly avoidably. https://www.statnews.com/2020/06/19/faster-response-prevented-most-us-covid-19-deaths/ https://www.statnews.com/2020/06/19/faster-response-prevente... The virus is growing unchecked in 44 states. Yesterday, Florida reported a record 9,585 new cases. It's not even 3PM in Florida and they have already reported a record 10,682 new cases today. This terrible disregard for science is going to kill hundreds of thousands of Americans unnecessarily. Please reconsider your stance.

ericb 6y ago

> Why should Governments force people into lockdown for a virus with a CFR of 0.26% Do you have a source for that--not something like "The Dental Tribune," but a link to the CDC page, or scientific study. I haven't seen anything in studies below 0.4%. You're leaving out long term consequences in your calculation, which we're seeing but haven't quantified yet. You're also leaving out the explosive speed of spread, which can overwhelm ICUs. Mask wearing is cheap and easy and seems to be associated with a region bringing it under control, so perhaps you can make your case about lock down, but the "open up without masks" seems foolhardy given those other facts.