6 ms·

I might be like... extra retarded for saying this but... with 153k cases in Florida and 3.5k deaths (2.3%), is it really that bad? I can only imagine how many h

I might be like... extra retarded for saying this but... with 153k cases in Florida and 3.5k deaths (2.3%), is it really that bad? I can only imagine how many hundreds of thousands (if not millions) of Florida citizens have it/have had it and had no symptoms and aren't getting tested (which would drive the death percentage down something fierce). I feel like I have a higher chance of dying driving down the street. Am I being ignorant?

MrGilbert 6y ago
> Am I being ignorant? Not, it's called 'optimism bias' [1] [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Optimism_bias https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Optimism_bias
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
m0zg 6y ago
> with 153k cases in Florida and 3.5k deaths (2.3%), is it really that bad? You don't even know if it's 3.5K deaths _due to_ COVID in the first place. The way US counts the deaths from this is "unique" in that if someone had COVID when they died, but they did not die _from_ COVID, they're still counted as a COVID death. That's why countries like Russia with much less formidable healthcare systems have "lower" fatality ratios. They're counting those who died _because of_ COVID, not _with_ it. Why are we counting our deaths like this? I genuinely do not have a rational explanation, assuming there is one. And soon you won't even know if the number of cases is accurate either, since CDC has put out guidance that there is a chance of false positives in newer tests if you had common cold. Which most people have _several times a year_. https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/lab/resources/antibody-tests-guidelines.html https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/lab/resources/anti... Quote: "Some tests may exhibit cross-reactivity with other coronaviruses, such as those that cause the common cold."
- atmosx 6y ago
  Because for many cases it is not clear. The resources needed to understand are not there, they need to allocate them to save the living. This situation is extremely complex and we simply don’t have the tools and resources to deal with it effectively.
- l0ner 6y ago
  In most countries, if you die having COVID, and you cant exclude COVID as being the cause, you are included in the COVID death count. In russia, if you die having COVID, but yoy also have any other sickness that could be the cause of death, you are not included in the COVID death count. While the former overestimates, the latter underestimates. I dont have any reference to prove it, but my gut feeling tells me that the latter is probably even further away from the true number than the former. In any case, they are absolutely not comparable.
  - barrkel 6y ago
    The best statistical tool we have to figure out the real death rate due to COVID is excess mortality, and these numbers have been higher even than the seemingly overattributed numbers. There are still a bunch of people who die and don't get attributed, and there are people who die because there's a pandemic on and they don't get healthcare as a result, either because there isn't capacity or to avoid infection.
- JohnBooty 6y ago
  The way US counts the deaths from this is "unique" in that if someone had COVID when they died, but they did not die _from_ COVID, they're still counted as a COVID death That's how diseases work. In a literal sense the only actual cause of death ever is a cessation of cardiovascular function. You don't die "from" AIDS. You die from pnuemonia, malnutrition, opportunistic infections that attack your weakened immune system, etc. You don't even die directly "from" cancer. The tumors on your pancreas don't directly kill you in the sense that stepping on a landmine directly kills you. That's why countries like Russia with much less formidable healthcare systems have "lower" fatality ratios. They're counting those who died _because of_ COVID, not _with_ it. That's not realistic at all. Your odds of dying from disease during any given month are pretty low. If you get COVID-19 and die, the overwhelming probability is that.... yes, it was COVID-19. While not a perfect method of accounting it is assuredly more accurate than assuming the opposite, which is what countries like Russia are apparently doing. If a person has cancer (or hepatitis, or psoriasis, or dementia, or whatever) for two years, and then they contract COVID-19 and die the next week, it certainly may have been the cancer that did them in, but it was almost certainly the COVID-19 that put them over the edge. In reality, a number of factors did them in, but if you had to pick one it would be their acute bout with COVID-19 that proved the deciding factor.
  - m0zg 6y ago
    > the overwhelming probability is that.... yes, it was COVID-19 Even if you had stage 4 cancer and would die in a week anyway? Then there's the issue of excess deaths caused by _not going to the doctor_ because you can't do "elective" procedures like stents and such, or just because you're afraid of getting infected. You can die of cardiovascular (or other) disease this way, and if you had e.g. asymptomatic covid (like most people who have it) you'd be counted as a COVID death then.
    - JohnBooty 6y ago
      Even if you had stage 4 cancer and would die in a week anyway? Why yes, then it might be more accurate to say that your stage 4 cancer killed you. But now, consider: most people are not in the absolutely final, terminal phase of a deadly illness. To what percentage of dead COVID-19 sufferers would a situation like that possibly apply? A very tiny one, surely. That is why tallying COVID-19 deaths in this manner is acceptable and accurate. It perhaps introduces a small amount of error, but is superior to Russia's method (which sounds like outright denial of reality) and the error % introduced is in any event, is at least an order of magnitude (if not two) smaller than that posed by the number of undiagnosed COVID-19 cases.
- prostoalex 6y ago
  That’s just one of the approaches, another one is counting excess deaths - delta between predicted and actual mortality rates. It normalizes against external factors, such as poor testing infrastructure or (in some countries) government pressure to keep the numbers low. https://www.economist.com/graphic-detail/2020/04/16/tracking-covid-19-excess-deaths-across-countries https://www.economist.com/graphic-detail/2020/04/16/tracking...
  - m0zg 6y ago
    Could it be that a good fraction of those "excess deaths" is caused by people choosing not to seek (or being unable to get) medical help with the conditions they already have? 2.65 million people die in the US in an average year in total, most of things like cancer or heart disease. Some of those things you can treat, some you can't nowadays, because procedures are "elective" and hospitals don't do them.
    - pcl 6y ago
      Yes, and there is a good argument that such deaths are COVID-related, even though the virus itself didn’t infect the person. This is one of the reasons that “excess deaths” is a compelling measure.
      - ballenf 6y ago
        If I shoot you to prevent you from falling over the edge of a cliff, is that a fall-related death? Causation is difficult. Obviously the answer is somewhere in the middle. I just hope that in the coming years, researchers are permitted and incentived to analyze the numbers in detail.
    - fredophile 6y ago
      If you won't or can't get medical care due to covid and die from your lack of medical care I'd say it's fair to say that you died because of covid.
    - IfOnlyYouKnew 6y ago
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- NamTaf 6y ago
  As countless others have explained, this is an incredibly obtuse way of looking at it since they wouldn't have died in the nearly total majority of cases if it weren't for COVID. This is provably the case, since the average death rate is very steady year on year, yet shot up this year. People are dying in droves from something, and if not COVID then what do you propose? Hell, in reality the US and other countries are underreporting their figures, because there's still a whole tonne of unexplained deaths above the COVID numbers and no other explanation as to why those deaths have occurred. See the following for further explanation. [1]: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/04/21/world/coronavirus-missing-deaths.html https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/04/21/world/coronav... [2]: https://www.bbc.com/news/health-53233066 https://www.bbc.com/news/health-53233066
elorant 6y ago
It is bad once hospitals become overflown with cases. We saw it in NY, in Italy, in Spain etc. It's not the fatality rate per se the problem, it's how fast all these people will get infected.
1123581321 6y ago
Your odds of dying from covid are higher. Auto deaths per passenger mile are 1-2 per 100 million miles, or about 1/20th (rough ballpark) the chance of dying from covid in the next couple years if you drive regularly and if you don’t already have health issues. I think it’s reasonable to wonder that, though.
warent 6y ago
I'm not sure what retardation has anything to do with this. If you mean you might be extra ignorant, that's something else. Consider speaking more clearly and abandoning the awkward slang. There's a common trend of mixing up the fatality percentage and the odds of dying to this. You seem to be falling into that confusion. A mortality rate of 2.3% doesnt mean you have a 2.3% chance of dying to it. If you're elderly and/or have a preexisting respiratory condition, then you have a much higher likelihood of something going very wrong. The younger and healthier you are, the lower the likelihood is that your health will be severely impacted. That's why young healthy people such as myself (25, regular exercise, no preexisting conditions) need to be more worried about other people. It isn't about my health, it's about theirs.
- bsder 6y ago
  > That's why young healthy people such as myself (25, regular exercise, no preexisting conditions) need to be more worried about other people. It isn't about my health, it's about theirs. This is not a factual statement. America is skewing younger with more complications than Europe. While it is always a good idea to think about others, the young aren't as immune to this as they think they are. Or, as I crudely put it to one youngster: You use condoms, right? Well, Covid statistically is more dangerous and more contagious than anything a condom protects against. Wear a mask, wash your hands, and keep your distance.
pjc50 6y ago
9/11 killed about 3k Americans, was it really that bad?
- tasuki 6y ago
  For the people killed and their relatives and friends? Yes, for sure. Considering all the suffering going on in the world? No, not at all. There was a huge overreaction to 9/11 in the US which caused much more suffering than the event itself.
- junipertea 6y ago
  It was definitely terrible for many other countries.
- jacquesm 6y ago
  If you were an Iraqi, yes, it was really that bad.
- duaoebg 6y ago
  The media tells us who to care about and by how much. I find the whole thing very irrational and very isolating. I’m quasi American and I have always hated the people who worked in those towers. The primary business of financialization is to rob the masses of their wealth / pensions. They are a well dressed and well behaved parasitical class. Osama Bin Laden’s stated intention was to drag the US in to a quagmire and the US obliged. Despite what MMT people may believe, the US will now have to get used to being a much poorer country. That adjustment will not be easy.
viraptor 6y ago
It's not just the question of dying, although the numbers seems to be concentrating on that. Some people who don't die are sick for months. Some don't really fully recover, or have lasting effects. It's a bit like the stats for dying driving. It doesn't include people who survive but lose their legs or can't function independently anymore. In both cases think of the affected percentage which is so much higher.
ascotan 6y ago
Not your not wrong. The statistics show that the mortality rate is low unless your 65+. It's much higher than the flu, but less than say SARS was back in 2005. However, this isn't the real problem. Unlike most illnesses this one has a very long incubation time (like 1-2 weeks) unlike the flu where you get sick in a day or so. This means you can be walking around making people ill and spreading the disease even though you're totally fine. (Which is why walking around with out a mask isn't healthy for other people) So the real issue isn't you getting sick and dying but the fact that you're spreading the illness to 20+ other people and making the problem so much worse. All these sick people will eventually effect you (as they already have) overwhelming health and social services.

MrGilbert 6y ago

> Am I being ignorant? Not, it's called 'optimism bias' [1] [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Optimism_bias https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Optimism_bias

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

m0zg 6y ago

> with 153k cases in Florida and 3.5k deaths (2.3%), is it really that bad? You don't even know if it's 3.5K deaths _due to_ COVID in the first place. The way US counts the deaths from this is "unique" in that if someone had COVID when they died, but they did not die _from_ COVID, they're still counted as a COVID death. That's why countries like Russia with much less formidable healthcare systems have "lower" fatality ratios. They're counting those who died _because of_ COVID, not _with_ it. Why are we counting our deaths like this? I genuinely do not have a rational explanation, assuming there is one. And soon you won't even know if the number of cases is accurate either, since CDC has put out guidance that there is a chance of false positives in newer tests if you had common cold. Which most people have _several times a year_. https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/lab/resources/antibody-tests-guidelines.html https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/lab/resources/anti... Quote: "Some tests may exhibit cross-reactivity with other coronaviruses, such as those that cause the common cold."

atmosx 6y ago
Because for many cases it is not clear. The resources needed to understand are not there, they need to allocate them to save the living. This situation is extremely complex and we simply don’t have the tools and resources to deal with it effectively.
l0ner 6y ago
In most countries, if you die having COVID, and you cant exclude COVID as being the cause, you are included in the COVID death count. In russia, if you die having COVID, but yoy also have any other sickness that could be the cause of death, you are not included in the COVID death count. While the former overestimates, the latter underestimates. I dont have any reference to prove it, but my gut feeling tells me that the latter is probably even further away from the true number than the former. In any case, they are absolutely not comparable.
- barrkel 6y ago
  The best statistical tool we have to figure out the real death rate due to COVID is excess mortality, and these numbers have been higher even than the seemingly overattributed numbers. There are still a bunch of people who die and don't get attributed, and there are people who die because there's a pandemic on and they don't get healthcare as a result, either because there isn't capacity or to avoid infection.
JohnBooty 6y ago
The way US counts the deaths from this is "unique" in that if someone had COVID when they died, but they did not die _from_ COVID, they're still counted as a COVID death That's how diseases work. In a literal sense the only actual cause of death ever is a cessation of cardiovascular function. You don't die "from" AIDS. You die from pnuemonia, malnutrition, opportunistic infections that attack your weakened immune system, etc. You don't even die directly "from" cancer. The tumors on your pancreas don't directly kill you in the sense that stepping on a landmine directly kills you. That's why countries like Russia with much less formidable healthcare systems have "lower" fatality ratios. They're counting those who died _because of_ COVID, not _with_ it. That's not realistic at all. Your odds of dying from disease during any given month are pretty low. If you get COVID-19 and die, the overwhelming probability is that.... yes, it was COVID-19. While not a perfect method of accounting it is assuredly more accurate than assuming the opposite, which is what countries like Russia are apparently doing. If a person has cancer (or hepatitis, or psoriasis, or dementia, or whatever) for two years, and then they contract COVID-19 and die the next week, it certainly may have been the cancer that did them in, but it was almost certainly the COVID-19 that put them over the edge. In reality, a number of factors did them in, but if you had to pick one it would be their acute bout with COVID-19 that proved the deciding factor.
- m0zg 6y ago
  > the overwhelming probability is that.... yes, it was COVID-19 Even if you had stage 4 cancer and would die in a week anyway? Then there's the issue of excess deaths caused by _not going to the doctor_ because you can't do "elective" procedures like stents and such, or just because you're afraid of getting infected. You can die of cardiovascular (or other) disease this way, and if you had e.g. asymptomatic covid (like most people who have it) you'd be counted as a COVID death then.
  - JohnBooty 6y ago
    Even if you had stage 4 cancer and would die in a week anyway? Why yes, then it might be more accurate to say that your stage 4 cancer killed you. But now, consider: most people are not in the absolutely final, terminal phase of a deadly illness. To what percentage of dead COVID-19 sufferers would a situation like that possibly apply? A very tiny one, surely. That is why tallying COVID-19 deaths in this manner is acceptable and accurate. It perhaps introduces a small amount of error, but is superior to Russia's method (which sounds like outright denial of reality) and the error % introduced is in any event, is at least an order of magnitude (if not two) smaller than that posed by the number of undiagnosed COVID-19 cases.
prostoalex 6y ago
That’s just one of the approaches, another one is counting excess deaths - delta between predicted and actual mortality rates. It normalizes against external factors, such as poor testing infrastructure or (in some countries) government pressure to keep the numbers low. https://www.economist.com/graphic-detail/2020/04/16/tracking-covid-19-excess-deaths-across-countries https://www.economist.com/graphic-detail/2020/04/16/tracking...
- m0zg 6y ago
  Could it be that a good fraction of those "excess deaths" is caused by people choosing not to seek (or being unable to get) medical help with the conditions they already have? 2.65 million people die in the US in an average year in total, most of things like cancer or heart disease. Some of those things you can treat, some you can't nowadays, because procedures are "elective" and hospitals don't do them.
  - pcl 6y ago
    Yes, and there is a good argument that such deaths are COVID-related, even though the virus itself didn’t infect the person. This is one of the reasons that “excess deaths” is a compelling measure.
    - ballenf 6y ago
      If I shoot you to prevent you from falling over the edge of a cliff, is that a fall-related death? Causation is difficult. Obviously the answer is somewhere in the middle. I just hope that in the coming years, researchers are permitted and incentived to analyze the numbers in detail.
  - fredophile 6y ago
    If you won't or can't get medical care due to covid and die from your lack of medical care I'd say it's fair to say that you died because of covid.
  - IfOnlyYouKnew 6y ago
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
NamTaf 6y ago
As countless others have explained, this is an incredibly obtuse way of looking at it since they wouldn't have died in the nearly total majority of cases if it weren't for COVID. This is provably the case, since the average death rate is very steady year on year, yet shot up this year. People are dying in droves from something, and if not COVID then what do you propose? Hell, in reality the US and other countries are underreporting their figures, because there's still a whole tonne of unexplained deaths above the COVID numbers and no other explanation as to why those deaths have occurred. See the following for further explanation. [1]: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/04/21/world/coronavirus-missing-deaths.html https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/04/21/world/coronav... [2]: https://www.bbc.com/news/health-53233066 https://www.bbc.com/news/health-53233066

elorant 6y ago

It is bad once hospitals become overflown with cases. We saw it in NY, in Italy, in Spain etc. It's not the fatality rate per se the problem, it's how fast all these people will get infected.

1123581321 6y ago

Your odds of dying from covid are higher. Auto deaths per passenger mile are 1-2 per 100 million miles, or about 1/20th (rough ballpark) the chance of dying from covid in the next couple years if you drive regularly and if you don’t already have health issues. I think it’s reasonable to wonder that, though.

warent 6y ago

I'm not sure what retardation has anything to do with this. If you mean you might be extra ignorant, that's something else. Consider speaking more clearly and abandoning the awkward slang. There's a common trend of mixing up the fatality percentage and the odds of dying to this. You seem to be falling into that confusion. A mortality rate of 2.3% doesnt mean you have a 2.3% chance of dying to it. If you're elderly and/or have a preexisting respiratory condition, then you have a much higher likelihood of something going very wrong. The younger and healthier you are, the lower the likelihood is that your health will be severely impacted. That's why young healthy people such as myself (25, regular exercise, no preexisting conditions) need to be more worried about other people. It isn't about my health, it's about theirs.

bsder 6y ago
> That's why young healthy people such as myself (25, regular exercise, no preexisting conditions) need to be more worried about other people. It isn't about my health, it's about theirs. This is not a factual statement. America is skewing younger with more complications than Europe. While it is always a good idea to think about others, the young aren't as immune to this as they think they are. Or, as I crudely put it to one youngster: You use condoms, right? Well, Covid statistically is more dangerous and more contagious than anything a condom protects against. Wear a mask, wash your hands, and keep your distance.

pjc50 6y ago

9/11 killed about 3k Americans, was it really that bad?

tasuki 6y ago
For the people killed and their relatives and friends? Yes, for sure. Considering all the suffering going on in the world? No, not at all. There was a huge overreaction to 9/11 in the US which caused much more suffering than the event itself.
junipertea 6y ago
It was definitely terrible for many other countries.
jacquesm 6y ago
If you were an Iraqi, yes, it was really that bad.
duaoebg 6y ago
The media tells us who to care about and by how much. I find the whole thing very irrational and very isolating. I’m quasi American and I have always hated the people who worked in those towers. The primary business of financialization is to rob the masses of their wealth / pensions. They are a well dressed and well behaved parasitical class. Osama Bin Laden’s stated intention was to drag the US in to a quagmire and the US obliged. Despite what MMT people may believe, the US will now have to get used to being a much poorer country. That adjustment will not be easy.

viraptor 6y ago

It's not just the question of dying, although the numbers seems to be concentrating on that. Some people who don't die are sick for months. Some don't really fully recover, or have lasting effects. It's a bit like the stats for dying driving. It doesn't include people who survive but lose their legs or can't function independently anymore. In both cases think of the affected percentage which is so much higher.

ascotan 6y ago

Not your not wrong. The statistics show that the mortality rate is low unless your 65+. It's much higher than the flu, but less than say SARS was back in 2005. However, this isn't the real problem. Unlike most illnesses this one has a very long incubation time (like 1-2 weeks) unlike the flu where you get sick in a day or so. This means you can be walking around making people ill and spreading the disease even though you're totally fine. (Which is why walking around with out a mask isn't healthy for other people) So the real issue isn't you getting sick and dying but the fact that you're spreading the illness to 20+ other people and making the problem so much worse. All these sick people will eventually effect you (as they already have) overwhelming health and social services.